The Boys of Summer

by Richard Cox

  “Okay,” he said. “I did it.”

  His mother beamed. “See there. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “No.” It had in fact been relatively painless.

  She pushed the chair back to its place against the table. “So tell me, Jonathan. How did you do it?”

  Shit. Here was something he hadn’t considered. When you lied about doing it, you had to lie again to explain how you did it.

  “I was, uh, tossing a steak knife up and trying to catch it by its handle. One time I missed, and it fell right down on the chair and cut it.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “A couple of days ago.”

  His mother thought about this for a minute and then smiled again. “Well, thank you for owning up to it. You can go back to your room and read or do whatever you like. You’ve earned it.”

  Jonathan turned away from her, deliberately, as if the whole episode was a big joke. It made no sense to him, this new tactic of his mother’s, and he could not believe she would let him walk away without extracting some kind of penalty. But she said nothing more, and soon he was alone in his room again, where the spiral notebook beckoned. He sat down at his desk and picked up the pen. It wobbled in his hand as he stared at the blank page. He wrote:

  The strange thing was how the words seemed to flow right out of mind and onto the page. Instead of picturing the scene itself, like the look on Annie’s face and the bloody axe, in this case he was hearing specific words and phrases. Like “left leg just above the ankle” and “Indian warpaint.” He’d never even thought of Indian war paint before.

  38

  By the next afternoon Jonathan had incorporated a new idea into the story, where Annie snoops through Paul’s private things and discovers a new manuscript he’s just finished. She reads this novel, hates it, and burns it in a charcoal grill while Paul helplessly watches. If this weren’t awful enough, destroying thousands of hours of work, Annie then presents her own story idea and forces Paul to write it for her. Jonathan was beginning to realize that the way to build a good story was to figure out what a character would like and then give him something different or even the opposite thing. It was more interesting when people suffered, he noticed, than when everything worked out for them.

  Now Jonathan was reading through the new version of his story, pretending it was a book on the library shelf, as if he were any old eighth grader looking for a good read. He wanted to distance himself from the words, imagine someone else had written them, to get an idea how good the work really was. But it was no use. Every line and every word was familiar to him. What he needed was for someone else to read it.

  Bobby didn’t own a single book and never read outside of school, so there was no sense in asking him. He would have loved for Alicia to read it, but for obvious reasons that was not currently an option. That left one of the other guys, probably David or maybe even Todd.

  Jonathan was on his way outside, spiral notebook in hand, when he encountered Kenny Steele. Kenny was carrying a beer and a package of Doritos toward the back door.

  “Hey, Mr. Steele.”

  “Jonathan, I keep telling you to call me ‘Kenny.’ This ‘Mr. Steele’ stuff is too slick for a guy like me.”

  “Okay,” Jonathan replied. An adult’s first name felt large and awkward in his mouth. “Kenny.”

  Kenny lifted his beer and nodded. “Much better. Whatcha got there?”

  Jonathan looked down at the notebook as if he hadn’t realized he was carrying it. He didn’t know what to say.

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  “It’s a, uh . . . it’s a notebook. I’ve been writing in it. A short story.”

  Kenny looked at him as if a Martian were standing there instead of a thirteen-year-old boy. “You’re writing a story? A made-up one?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kenny offered his hand. “For real? Can I have a look?”

  “Well, sure. I guess. I mean if you want to. It starts like eight pages in.”

  Jonathan watched as Kenny flipped through the notebook looking for the title page.

  “‘Misery’, by Jonathan Crane,” Kenny read aloud, and then burped. “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

  “You can take some time if you like. I don’t—”

  “I ain’t much of a reader, but why don’t you follow me outside and I’ll take a look. I was just about to take a break by the pool.”

  Kenny turned and walked toward the back door. Jonathan followed. When he stepped outside he saw Bobby at the far end of the pool, resting against the concrete edge, breathing hard. Bobby enjoyed the butterfly stroke because of the way it built his shoulders, and he often spent hours in the pool swimming laps. So while it wasn’t surprising to find him out here now, it was nonetheless terrible timing, because the last thing Jonathan wanted was to hear his story critiqued by Bobby’s dad in front of Bobby himself. Only bad things could come from this. Like Jonathan taking shit from Bobby the rest of the summer.

  His stomach churned with an uneasy combination of anxiety, curiosity, and pride as he watched Kenny read. It was frankly bizarre for another person to consume the words you had written, even if the whole idea was for other people to read them, and it was especially weird to watch it happen in real time like this. Once or twice he glanced over at Bobby and saw him looking in their direction. Jonathan wondered what he was thinking. Whatever was on his mind didn’t seem to please him very much.

  “I got just one piece of advice for you,” Kenny said when he finally looked up. He had made it to the third page. “Don’t quit writing.”

  “No?”

  “Like I said, I ain’t much of a reader. But if I’d been as smart when I was a kid as you are now, I sure as hell wouldn’t be no framer.”

  “Well, I—”

  “I’m not saying let that go to your head. What I’m saying is you got a skill just like my boy does. And just like he’s gotta work his ass off to make the high school squad and impress those college scouts, you gotta work hard at this writing. My guess is not that many people get to be a professional writer. I sure don’t know any, do you?”

  Jonathan shook his head. He glanced at Bobby again, who looked angrier than ever.

  “But I bet it’s just like sports. I bet those who do make it, I bet they make a pretty good living at it. So don’t ever quit. Keep at it until you get it done. Understand?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Steele. That’s really good advice. And thanks for taking a look. I really appreciate it.”

  Jonathan glanced toward the far end of the pool once more before going back inside. When he did, he saw Bobby push himself out of the pool and dry off without turning back to look at them. Was he angry about something? Did he think Jonathan was a nerd for wanting to write stories? It was impossible to know without asking, but who really cared, anyway? An adult had just looked at Jonathan’s work and found it promising. Maybe he really did have a future as an author. And maybe, when he finished the story, he could visit Alicia after all and show her what he’d done. Maybe there was still a chance to make things right with her.

  Maybe anything was possible if you worked at it hard enough.

  39

  An hour ago Bobby had been sitting in front of the television, playing Kaboom!, but finally he tossed aside his controller and gave up because there was no point. Jonathan had set a new high score several days ago, more than 15,000, and it was obvious Bobby was never going to catch him. He could see the bombs falling just fine but he couldn’t make his hands obey commands reliably enough. And whenever he finally did get a good game going, whenever he felt even a little hopeful about his chances, something in his brain went haywire and he would inexplicably fuck up. Finally he gave up and went outside, and luckily Jonathan wasn’t in the pool. It seemed like he couldn’t get away from that kid lately. More and more his dad wanted to stay over here at night, which meant Bobby was forced to stay, too.

  Maybe it wasn’t so bad. At least in Tanglewood he could pretend he
wasn’t poor. In his own neighborhood it was all peeling paint and rotting wood and crumbling concrete driveways. The houses there were so small Bobby wondered if they might be shrinking, as if someone were working over the neighborhood with a giant eraser, making rooms and screened-in porches and second stories disappear.

  Bobby didn’t often consider ideas that weren’t staring him in the face. He saw life primarily as a series of obstacles to overcome, and spent most of his time reacting to situations as they occurred. But there was one idea that sometimes did keep him awake at night, and that was the fear that his life was already decided for him. That no matter how hard he tried to reach his goals, there would always be a limit to what he could achieve because of the world he had been born into.

  When he was younger, back when his mom was still alive, Bobby had paid close attention to his grades and sometimes even made A’s. His report card was a source of pride, and every six weeks, as long as there were no C’s on it, she would take him out for pizza and root beer. But now his mom was gone, and his dad had expended great effort to erase her influence. He pointed out that not many eighth-grade athletes were courted by high school coaches, especially not to become quarterback of the oldest high school in Wichita. He also asked if Bobby had ever heard of a junior high student being recruited by high school teachers because of his amazing grades? The obvious point being that, around here at least, athletics were more highly valued than academics.

  But was it possible to be both a good athlete and a good student? If his dad hadn’t lost his mind the day of the tornado, if his mom were still alive, would Bobby’s life would be different now? Maybe so, but that’s not what had happened. What happened was his stupid dad picked a fight over chess and two people died.

  The most ridiculous thing was how spectacularly his dad’s actions had backfired. The old man hadn’t wanted his son to spend time with Jonathan, and now spending time with Jonathan was all Bobby ever did. Sometimes it seemed like the whole world was someone else’s sick joke.

  He could still feel his mother trembling next to him, the two of them cowering in Jonathan’s pantry, after his father abandoned them. How she had trembled, how she had screamed at the terrible sound of the house collapsing around her . . .

  Bobby stood up quickly and jumped into the pool. From time to time the reality of his life overwhelmed him, and when this happened the only way to make the pain go away was to punish his body. From one end of the pool to the other he swam, back and forth, his arms and shoulders and legs working in unison to propel his torso through the water. The butterfly stroke was the most difficult and therefore his favorite. He swam as hard as he could, and with each stroke he thought about his mother a little less. With each stroke the pain eased a little.

  Finally he felt more like himself again and stopped to rest at the edge of the pool’s deep end. He’d been there less than a minute when the back door opened and his dad appeared, followed closely by Jonathan. They gathered near one of the chaise lounges and his dad began to read something. Bobby was fairly sure it was that red notebook Jonathan sometimes carried around with him. His dad seemed engrossed by whatever he was reading, and Bobby couldn’t fathom what it might be. Kenny Steele could barely sit still long enough to get a number out of the phonebook.

  But then his dad stopped reading and issued advice to Jonathan. Don’t quit writing, he said. If I had been as smart as you when I was a kid, I sure as hell wouldn’t be no framer.

  It seemed like the world was turning red somehow. As if everything he saw, everywhere he looked, there was blood. And a high pitched sound, like some kind of electrical feedback, began to make his head hurt.

  Bobby looked over at Jonathan and for a moment their eyes met, but honestly he could barely see anything at this point. What his dad had just said to Jonathan was inconceivable. He put on his shirt and stepped into a pair of flip flops and walked out of the back yard, rubbing his eyes as if there was something in them. Then he marched to the end of the street, across Ridgemont, and through David’s yard. Pretty soon he was in the trees, and finally the fort.

  Now he could cry in peace.

  Because let’s get real, how the fuck could his dad encourage Jonathan to pursue his intelligence when the old man had explicitly commanded Bobby to do the opposite for years? Apparently his intellect was so worthless that it demanded no attention whatsoever, whereas Jonathan was suddenly an expert at writing, he was Stephen fucking King.

  Bobby cried for a while, he couldn’t say how long, but eventually the tears dried up and he wiped his face clean. He was about to head back home when someone knocked on the door.

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “It’s Joe,” a voice said. “I was wondering if I could come in for a minute?”

  Through the gaps in the fence planks, Bobby could see the form of a kid.

  “What do you want, Joe?”

  “I, um. I thought of something I could do for you guys. To be in the club.”

  Under most circumstances Bobby would have opened the door and told the kid to fuck off. He knew like they all knew that Joe was too much of a baby to be a member of their club. Under most circumstances he would have scared the kid and been done with it.

  Instead, for a reason he didn’t understand, Bobby said, “What is it?”

  “Well, do most of you guys mow your own yards?”

  Bobby pushed open the loose fence planks and stepped out of the fort into the blinding afternoon sun.

  “You want to mow our yards?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen,” Bobby said. “I’m going to do you a favor. I’m only going to do it once, and if you tell anyone I’ll punch your face in. Got it?”

  Joe nodded. He was probably thirty pounds lighter than Bobby, and maybe four inches shorter. But really he was big for his age.

  Bobby said, “That kid, Todd, doesn’t like to do things in any normal way. He didn’t challenge you because he wants to get out of mowing his yard. He’s more like a mad scientist. He likes to put people in uncomfortable situations to see what they do.”

  Joe just stared at him.

  “He’s just pushing your buttons, kid. If it were me, I woulda told you to beat it. But Todd isn’t like that, all right?”

  Now Joe nodded.

  “Look, I’m telling you this for your own good. Don’t take shit from people. As soon as you take shit from some dude, he knows he can boss you around forever. You gotta stand up for yourself every chance you get. Even someone like me who’s twice as big as you, you gotta stand your ground. Because guess what? I don’t really like to fight. Even if I can completely kick your ass, you might hit me once or twice out of blind luck. Plus it hurts my hands to punch you in the face. Why would I hurt myself if I don’t have to?”

  Joe seemed skeptical of this reasoning.

  “Look. A guy like me isn’t going to keep picking on someone who fights back. It’s too much work. I got plenty of other people I can bother who don’t cause me trouble. You get what I’m saying?”

  “You’re saying it’s an act?”

  “Call it whatever you want, kid. Just don’t take shit from other people. Because once you start taking shit, you might not be able to stop. All right?”

  “All right,” Joe said. “So what should I do then? Just show up one day and say I’m in the club?”

  “No, that ain’t gonna work. Todd already set these ground rules for you. I say, if you want to go through with this, you gotta blow him out of the water. Don’t offer to mow our yards, all right? Turn the tables on him and think of something really fucked up, or really crazy, or unpredictable. Something.”

  Joe started to smile, but appeared to catch himself. Instead he stuck out his hand and said, “Thanks, man.”

  Bobby looked at the hand like he’d never seen one before. He almost told the kid to get out of his sight. Instead he reached out and shook with him, but when Joe tried to pull away, Bobby held him tight.

  “That’s the only lesson you�
�re ever going to get from me. And if you tell anyone, you’ll be sorry. Clear?”

  “Clear,” Joe answered.

  “Now get out of here.”

  40

  By the following morning, Jonathan had written all the way to the climax, where Paul pretends to burn the book he wrote for Annie and then kills her with a typewriter. With his creativity in overdrive, Jonathan felt more and more as if he were onto something special with this story. He was connected to the characters in a way that made them seem almost real, like Paul was a person who might stop by for a Coke and maybe throw the football with him. Annie and his mother, Jonathan felt sure, would become fast friends.

  But before he could begin the final scene, his mother’s voice startled him back into reality. She was yelling at him from across the house.

  He found her in the kitchen again, standing in front of the wounded chair, and Jonathan understood the time had come to pay for his lies. His stomach settled into his groin.

  “You know,” she said, pointing again at the brown Naugahyde surface, “I was thinking about this chair last night. About how you said it got cut.”

  Jonathan could think of no conceivable response. Why would anyone sit around and ponder a damaged chair three days after the issue had presumably been closed?

  “I was thinking you couldn’t have done it the way you said. Our steak knives aren’t that sharp, and the Naugahyde is pretty strong.”

  Jonathan had no idea if such a thing was possible or not. The story was a total fabrication.

  “But that’s how it happened. I already told you.”

  “I know you did, Jonathan. But it’s just not possible. The knife wouldn’t be heavy enough to puncture the Naugahyde or make a cut that long.”

  “Mom, I’m telling you—”

  “Jonathan, stop. Please just stop. Do you really want to undo the goodwill you built the other day?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then just be honest. I promise you won’t be in trouble. I won’t say anything to Kenny about it. I just want you to be honest from now on.”