by Brian Hodge
“I left my trunks at home,” I said.
Wendell’s smile faded — surprise, I think — then reappeared. He hawked and spat. And struck first.
His fist caught me on the left cheekbone with a crack and an internal starburst, knocking me back a couple of steps. But it didn’t hurt that badly. I’d known it was coming, and I’d been expecting a little more from the asshole. It smarted for a second or two, then faded to a quick throb. I could handle it. And him.
“Ho-lee shit, Wendell!” his friend cried. “There you go again!”
“Back off, man!” Wendell shouted. “This is between me and him!”
And then Wendell simply stood there. It took a moment for me to fathom that one: He was waiting for me to take my shot. The stupid bastard was waiting for me to punch him. Right then I saw that he wasn’t half so much violent or dangerous as he was mindless.
And I hated him for it. I wanted to beat him into the ground.
(We’ll do it together.)
Like the old days, I wanted to add, and had no idea why, or even where that first internal voice had come from.
I stepped up close to Wendell, almost to the point of my bare stomach touching his gut. He grinned, and I was peripherally aware of his thigh shifting, as if anticipating a knee to the groin. I tucked my right fist into my chest and swung with my doubled-up arm, leaning my entire body, into it. My forearm smashed across his chin and cheek, and my elbow connected above his left eye, opening up a tremendous cut that sheeted blood down his face. Wendell reeled backward five or six steps, leaning to his right, his one good eye wide and gleaming wildly.
I heard a couple of gasps from around us, then a perfect silence. Not even any bugs, although that didn’t register at the moment. Then I noticed Wendell’s ragged breathing. He grunted and charged. He was no longer thinking clearly, if he ever had, because I was able to easily sidestep and gutkick him as neatly as punting a football. His breath exploded in a rush and he gagged.
My thirty pounds less no longer seemed like a handicap. It meant I was lighter, lither, quicker. I started dancing around Wendell, circling him as he half crouched with his bloody face, glaring at me with one eye, the other swelling shut. I bounced a circle around him, tossing a punch now and then, connecting roughly half with a smack but doing little damage. Probably pissing him off more than anything.
Wendell swung a wild, low roundhouse that I should’ve dodged but didn’t. I took it in the ribs, a sharp pain searing through.
Wendell laughed, his breath coming in harsh gulps. He was hurting, definitely, but that was the last thing he’d admit. I knew the type.
“Climb on, asshole,” he said. “Just climb on.”
I moved in, faked with my left, and instead drove in another right. Same spot, above his left eye. Pulpy flesh squashed under my knuckles like a slug. More blood. Lots of it.
Wendell didn’t retreat, but instead crouched low again, charging head-on and butting low, driving me back against my own car with a tremendous thud. His arms flailed, and I thought I might’ve had it. His punches were finally starting to connect, and hurt like hell.
He was too close for anything other than a second elbow shot. This one I threw with my left arm. Not as successful as the first, I thought, but it did the job and got him off me. So much blood, flowing from where I’d hit him. And then, with a mixture of horror and glee, I realized that my last shot had driven his lower teeth through his lip. He shrieked then, a high, keening sound that raised goosebumps with its intensity.
I looked down at myself in the moonlight. My torso was streaked with dark smears. And Wendell was the bloodiest man I’d ever seen outside of the movies. He struggled to stand erect, one eye useless as he blinked the other to keep it clear, his mouth swelling to cartoon proportions. But the fight wasn’t out of him yet. I knew that Harden pride wouldn’t let him give up yet.
“Gimme a bottle, Roy!” Wendell shouted. “Gimme a bottle!”
“Shit, Wendell, we’re drinkin’ outa cans,” Roy said.
That did it. If ever I was tempted to show him mercy, he’d killed it with that. Bastard would use a bottle on me if given the chance. I moved in swinging, kicking, giving it all I had, scarcely feeling it whenever he got lucky enough to land one on me. I didn’t let up until Wendell sagged to the asphalt in a twitching heap. Even then I tried to stomp at him, but his friends and mine rushed out to keep us apart. Roy tried to drag Wendell away, and although I had no grievance with Roy, I lashed out my foot to kick him in the shoulder and knock him on his ass. And then Phil and Valerie both had their hands on me, pulling me back toward the car. I squirmed against their grip.
“Give it up, Chris,” Phil whispered in my ear. “He’s down, he’s gone, he’s history.”
I looked at Phil, then Val. In his face I saw worry and determination, and in hers, sick fright. Maybe even revulsion. That, as much as anything, made me allow them to lead me back to my car. I grabbed my shirt and we climbed in. We left Wendell on the asphalt, Roy and the nameless fat girl kneeling beside him. She was crying.
I’d driven all the way to the exit before I started to shake. Hands, legs, everything. No one had said a word. Just as well — I didn’t want to hear it. So I shook in silence, and had to stop before pulling out onto 1250 North. I threw the transmission into park.
“Oh shit,” I sobbed. “What happened to me back there?”
No one had an answer. And my tears flowed almost as freely as Wendell’s blood.
Chapter 12
Midweek binges weren’t unknown to Phil and Rick and me, and it didn’t necessarily have to be a special occasion, such as painting Hurdles’s ass. The following Wednesday we went out just for the hell of it; this was a couple days before the Fourth of July and Rick’s debut with Eclipse. Twang had talked of little else for days, and it was his hyperactivity at home that prompted him to call Phil and me. Being the purveyor of high culture that I am, I suggested taking in the softcore skin flicks at the drive-in.
Phil stopped for me first, then we went after Rick. When Twang began struggling through the front door with the Martin, Phil jumped out and held him at bay with a rock until he agreed to leave the guitar behind for a change. Possessed of keen insight, that was Phil.
“Thanks for coming out tonight, guys,” Rick said once he was in the car. He leaned over the front seat and threw his arms around Phil in a clumsy hug. “What would I do without you?”
Phil pried the laughing Twang’s arms from around his neck before gearing up the car. “Sometimes I wish you’d find out.”
“Let’s see your face, Chris,” he said.
I gave Rick the full view. “Think I’ll be marred for life?”
He shook his head. “Nah. You look a lot better than you did Saturday night. A few more days and you’ll be as pretty as ever.”
The swelling from my fight with Wendell was gone, and the bruises were fading from a sickly purple to an even sicker yellow. They had earned a variety of reactions. Aaron, who saw them Saturday morning, had gotten a vicarious thrill out of the story. Never much of a fighter, the few scraps he’d been in had always left him in second place. When Mom and Dad returned home from Kentucky on Sunday, her first thought was that I’d tried something with Valerie that I shouldn’t have. Dad didn’t seem too concerned, as long as it was just an isolated incident. At work, White Trash Joe and the other guys had given me quite a razzing until Phil told them I at least had been able to walk away from the scene, which was more than could be said for the other guy.
The first feature at the drive-in hit a new cinematic low. We knew better than to expect anything more than a little titillation, pun intended, from a drive-in skin flick, but some hidden compulsion made us keep trying. Phil and I slouched in lawn chairs with a cooler between us, and Rick lay across the Duster’s hood like a fresh kill during deer season. We gave the second movie fifteen minutes to prove its worth and show us some serious flesh, and when it failed, Phil suggested we take off. The idea met with litt
le resistance. We packed up our chairs and cooler and surrendered, victims of titles like Beaver City High once again. We’d never learn.
“Tri-Lakes, anyone?” Phil said as he steered us out. We left behind two or three angry cars that honked because we’d turned our lights on too early. Serious breach of drive-in etiquette.
“Fine by me,” Twang said.
I said nothing, and Phil probably took it as a reluctant compliance. And truthfully, I guess that’s what it was. Tri-Lakes was becoming an object of fascination for me, like the morbid curiosity that overwhelms most people when they pass a car wreck. You’ve got to stare. And sometimes you’re tempted to turn around for another pass.
We found Tri-Lakes deserted, and my breath came a little easier. We vacated the car and found ourselves under a clear sky, with the humidity down from the last few nights.
Conversation that night was typical, mostly about women. But it transcended our usual level of swapping stories and lies. Instead, we seemed strangely preoccupied with our futures.
“Who do you think we’ll end up marrying?” Rick asked. He’d been squatting down plucking at blades of grass for several minutes.
Phil chuckled, leaning against his fender. “You’re already married to your guitars, Twang.”
Rick sprang forward in a handstand and walked over to Phil this way, waving his sneakered feet in Phil’s face. Then he plopped back down like a skinny frog.
“I don’t think I’ve met her yet. Whoever she is, whoever can understand me and put up with what makes me tick, she’s out there, somewhere, waiting but we haven’t met yet.” Rick ripped up a tuft of grass, roots and all, and hurled it into the pond. It splashed in and sent shock waves across the water, rippling black and silver under the moon. “Talk about frustration.”
I hiked one foot on the front bumper. “How about it, Phil? You and Connie. If you thought she’d say yes, would you ask her?”
Phil grinned, rubbing his chin. He hadn’t shaved today and sounded bristly. “Probably, yeah. So far she seems like everything I ever wanted.” He laughed. “But it’d be one of the longest engagements on record. I’d want to be out of college first.” Phil shook his head. “Her old man would kill me if she had to work to put me through.” His voice rose half an octave. “‘You miserable little shit, making my daughter work to support you! Our estate is willed to the poodles until you’re divorced!’”
“Charming guy,” Rick said, strumming an imaginary guitar and fingering the notes of an unheard song.
“That’s him, through and through. Big snob. But anyway. Your turn, Chris. You plan on making an honest woman out of Valerie?”
I took my foot off the bumper, kicked at the tire. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought it over. But forever just doesn’t feel right, you know? I don’t know if it would ever feel right.”
“Too bad,” Phil said quietly. “What’s the problem?”
I hunched my shoulders helplessly. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe if I did, I’d know how to make it right.”
We slung the bull around awhile longer, until Rick noticed that the cassette playing inside Phil’s car had cycled through twice. “Mind if I change it? Time for something else.”
“Go ahead.” It was only background noise for Phil and me.
Rick sprawled across the front seat, ejected the tape in play. Others clattered as he sorted through them. New music issued from the speakers, and Rick hopped out. He grabbed the door by the edge with his left hand, pushing it back in. It latched with a solid thunk, but underneath was another sound, something not-quite-as-solid-as-metal giving under pressure.
His fingers?
Surely not.
The look on Rick’s face was almost comical, like cartoon-surprise. Wide eyes, mouth starting to gape. If he’d kept that expression a split-second longer I might have laughed. But his eyes turned anguished and his mouth opened wider to cry out in pain and scream a jumble of words. His knees buckled and he sagged toward the asphalt, his right hand flailing at the door handle without finding the button. Phil hit it and opened the door, and I caught Rick as he fell forward. I steadied him until he could stand on his own.
We pushed Twang back toward the car to look at the damage, the interior light showing us his middle three fingers. Already swelling up like plump wieners, they were streaked with long blood blisters, and dark blood stained the underside of all three nails. The shock wore off then and the real pain set in, and Rick started to cry.
“Can you bend them?” Phil asked. “Any at all?”
“I … I don’t wanna try,” Rick said, his voice tight and brittle. “Oh, why the fuck did I do that, it huuurts!”
I put an arm around him, folded the front seat forward. “Lay down in the back, Twang. It’ll be okay.” Such hollow words, but so easy, so readily available. “It’ll be okay.”
He did as I said, slowly, carefully, shaking. He curled into a fetal ball, mashed fingers held to his chest. And he cried. Not so much from the pain, I think, as from the loss of Friday night and what it could’ve meant. Could’ve led to.
By the time we made it back to town and to the hospital, Rick was sitting up and said the pain wasn’t quite as bad. No more tears, no more groans, but his face had lost its kiddish innocence, and what I saw looked like a long-haired old hermit embittered at an unforgiving world. The emergency room nurses took him back right away, leaving Phil and me to wait in an artificially cheery waiting room, empty except for an old black woman whose eyes and hands never strayed from her purse.
Phil hitched his thumb at a pay phone on the wall, and I took the honors. It was past eleven-thirty, and the call woke Rick’s parents up. His mom answered, and immediately understood what it meant when I told her it had been Rick’s left hand.
They arrived ten minutes later, both looking hurriedly dressed. Phil and I had grazed our way through half the concession area’s junk food to mask the beer smell. Mr. Woodward still looked half asleep, but Mrs. Woodward’s face was tight and sharp, and she constantly pushed back her chin-length hair. I’d always thought her pretty in a thin, mousy sort of way.
Rick was released fifteen minutes later, and he came out with his fingers encased in plastic splints and tape. His eyes were bloodshot, his face was red, and he’d forgotten how to smile. He looked more like a kid again, but a beaten-down kid … a kid who thinks he’s responsible for losing his team’s Little League championship. If his mom hadn’t gotten up to hug him, I would’ve.
The doctor said he’d gotten off lucky, all things considered. No breaks, although the middle finger had sustained a hairline crack. A hole had been melted through each nail to drain off the blood and he’d been given a shot for the pain, but little else could be done. The swelling would go down after several days, and until then, his fingers would feel tight and stretched and would throb.
I’m sure Rick felt anything but lucky. The accident hadn’t been so tragic as to leave his fingers in such shape that he’d never play again. They’d be good as new someday. But it would be months before he could resume normal playing. Months. And he could kiss Eclipse goodbye.
An hour later, as I lay awake in bed, I thought that I’d probably never felt so bad for anyone in my life.
Rick’s face continued to haunt me, coming down like a weight and crushing me into my bed. I hoped I’d never have to feel that bad for anyone ever again. Never.
But this was still early in the game. I’d yet to realize what real anguish felt like.
“You should’ve seen his face,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a face that sad in my life.”
Valerie twirled a finger in my hair. “But his hand’lI be okay?”
“Yeah, eventually. But he’s so down now. I wish I could do something for him.”
Val and I had done the usual movie routine and were now sitting under some trees by the lake at the city park. The bulk of a picnic table sat at our left, and water splashed gently at the shore. I simply felt like talking tonight instead of
parking, and if words failed me, I just wanted to hold and be held. This was our first night out since my fight with Wendell, and it felt especially good to be with her. Immediately following the fight, I guess she didn’t know what to make of me. Not that I blame her. I still wasn’t sure myself.
“And this happened at Tri-Lakes?” Val asked.
“Yeah.” I leaned back against her as she encircled me with her arms, lacing her fingers on my chest. “You know, when we first found it, Tri-Lakes seemed like such a great place. Someplace we could get off by ourselves. But it seems like it’s done nothing but bring us bad luck.”
Val kissed the top of my head. “Maybe you guys should find someplace new.”
“Maybe we should.” Then I laughed a little. “But I know we won’t. It got to be a habit, really fast.” Although I didn’t dare tell her, it was even more with me, almost a personal grudge. “It’s like staying in a lousy job because you’re too lazy to leave and find a better one. Or a game, and you’ve got to beat it.”
“Those are weird comparisons.” Her arms hugged tighter, the most pleasant of pressures. “I don’t always understand what’s going on in that head of yours, but I like it.”
I smiled and relaxed against her. And remembered what I’d told the guys the night before about our relationship. It suddenly seemed like a lie, because now everything felt right. It had taken a near tragedy to do it, but we’d clicked.
And I loved the way it felt.
Chapter 13
Friday, July fourth.
Phil and I were off work, and were happy as pre-collegiate clams about having a three-day weekend. I spent most of the day sunning in the backyard, trying to even out my tan. The day before, Phil and I had talked about going swimming, but it seemed like a rotten idea, with Rick and his bandaged fingers. He’d feel left out.
