Pot Shot

by Gerry Boyle

  It had been thirty seconds, maybe, and I was doing fine. I watched the area illuminated by the lights, saw moths veer in and out of the glare like tracers. I waited and listened.

  If it had been Stephen, I figured he wouldn’t approach the front of the truck. But from the uphill side, he would see only the high beams and wouldn’t know that I wasn’t in the cab. He would swing wide coming down and come up on the truck from the rear.

  If it had been Stephen.

  I waited. Heard the nebulous murmur of the night woods. The breeze in the leaves. Trees moving. Branches rubbing together. I listened for the sound of someone moving.

  Nothing.

  I wondered if I was deep enough in the brush, but I didn’t dare to move. I lowered my head and listened. Heard the woods whisper. Listened some more.

  And something cracked.

  A branch, to my right, up the road above the truck. I turned my head slowly and then was still. Watched. Listened. Heard the faintest of rustles. Then another. A footstep in the leaves. Something moving. Then nothing.

  I waited. Listened hard. Watched the darkness. And heard it again. To my right. Behind me.

  I lay still. Didn’t breathe. Waited and listened. Didn’t dare turn my head to look.

  And then I saw him.

  Stephen was coming up through the woods to my right, fifty feet away. He moved slowly, like a good hunter. Three steps and stop. Wait. Three more steps and stop. Listen.

  He was moving more toward the center of my field of vision. I could see the rifle in his right hand, barrel pointed down. He was in a half-crouch, easing his way up through the trees. When he came to the edge of the woods, he stopped. Listened. I lay still.

  Stephen was above me now. He eased along the edge of the woods, working his way closer to the road. I could see his camouflage sweatshirt, his jeans and boots. He was almost in front of me now, fifteen feet away, watching the truck. Stephen stopped and waited and listened. He seemed to think I would be in the truck, but seemed puzzled that he couldn’t see my head, that I wasn’t standing anywhere around the truck.

  I waited until he was directly in front of me, rifle hanging down at his side. He bent down and looked under the truck, then popped back up. As he took a step toward the truck, then another, I eased myself up, first to my elbows, then on my hands and knees. Stephen was on the driver’s side, near the back bumper. As he peered into the truck bed, I got to my feet. He moved toward the driver’s door, very slowly. I moved after him, picking my feet straight up and easing them back down in the wet leaves. I was at the edge of the road when I saw his back stiffen.

  “You from Triple A?” I said. “Took you long enough to get here.”

  Stephen turned slowly, like he thought I might have a gun pointed at his back. When he finished turning, I grinned.

  “It runs fine, but there’s a small hole in the back, on the left. From a twenty-two. You haven’t seen anybody tromping around these woods with a rifle, have you?”

  Stephen glowered at me. I let my grin drain away and walked closer.

  “So what’s your problem?”

  He looked at me.

  “Hard of hearing? What’s your problem?”

  “No problem,” Stephen said, barely moving his lips.

  “Your dad said you had something to say to me.”

  “He isn’t my dad.”

  “Okay. The guy who lives in your house with you and your mother and phony Chief Running Water, also known as Joe Schmo from Valley, there. That guy said you had something to say to me.”

  I stepped closer so we were face-to-face. Stephen looked away. The rifle hung at his side limply, or at least as limply as a rifle can hang.

  “If the mental telepathy doesn’t work you can try talking with your mouth.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Stephen began.

  “Yeah, well what?”

  “Yeah, well, it was a dumb thing to do.”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “So it was a dumb thing to do. What do you want me to do? Kiss your ass?”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  I went to the door, opened it, and shut off the headlights, but left the parking lights on. Then I stepped back and stared at him. The eyes with their permanent glare. The shaved head. The bottled-up anger that trickled out of the end of the barrel of his gun.

  “So what is it? Got something against Toyotas?”

  Stephen snorted.

  “Got something against me?”

  He didn’t snort.

  “So what is it? Here’s your chance. Say it.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Jeez, give me a chance, will ya?” He almost looked at me.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, Stephen.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  I waited. We stood there in the glow of the parking lights. I waited some more.

  “I don’t want any goddamn pot story,” he said, more quietly.

  “But your parents do.”

  “He’s not my—”

  “Okay. Your stepfather or whatever you call him.”

  “I don’t call him anything.”

  “Fine. But they want the story. They’re all gung-ho about it.”

  “Yeah, right,” Stephen said. “They make themselves look like idiots. I take all the shit for it.”

  “You don’t agree with them?”

  “I hate it.”

  “Hate what?”

  “Marijuana. Sitting around talking this crap, doesn’t mean anything, laughing like he’s the funniest guy in the world, eyes all shut up and red and you can’t even talk to him, not that you’d want to. House friggin’ stinks. I hate that smell. I hate all of it. That’s why I live in the woods. Except when it’s, like, zero out.”

  He looked away. His eyes were moist like he might cry. He wasn’t as tough as he’d seemed. But then, very few people were.

  “What about your mother?”

  He shrugged.

  “She goes along with him. She’s always gone along with him. You think he’s this funny guy, right? But he’s not. He bosses her around. His way or the highway.”

  “And the highway’s a long way from here.”

  “That’s how he wants it. She’s a prisoner here, practically. Me, too.”

  “Where would you like to live?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. In town. Like everybody else. You know, a house with a driveway. Play hoops in the driveway.”

  “You like basketball?”

  “I suck at it. ’Cause everybody else plays it all the time. I play at gym class, that’s about it.”

  I looked out at the black woods, then back at him.

  “Have many friends?”

  Stephen shrugged, which answered the question.

  “They call me Stoney. The teachers used to, like, send me to the office all the time ’cause they smelled pot on me. I’d say, ‘It isn’t me.’ They’d say, ‘Right.’ Last year I got suspended, like, three times. They called my mom and shit.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Bobby went in and made, like, this massive deal out of it. Brought in all these papers and waved ’em around and talked about his constitutional rights and all this crap. Got in the principal’s face. Threatened to sue her.”

  “So what happened?”

  “They backed down. They didn’t want him parked there for the rest of the year. I mean, he was ready to bring in all his buddies and picket the place.”

  “Was he mad at you?”

  “Shit, no. He thought it was great. Gave him another chance to spout. That’s what he does best. Talk, talk, talk.”

  “And what happened to you?”

  “I got shit. The druggies thought I was one of them and I blew ’em off, and the jocks think I’m a freak, so what the hell. I don’t need ’em.”

  “You’ve got your woods and your gun, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “What kind of gun is it?”

&
nbsp; “Remington, twenty-two. It’s nothing special but it’s accurate. I want a Ruger ten. Semiautomatic.”

  “I’ve got a Remington thirty-aught-six,” I said.

  “You deer-hunt?”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you have it for?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s come in handy sometimes.”

  “Too big,” Stephen said. “Shoot it and you hear it for miles.”

  “You like it quiet?”

  “I’d have a silencer if I could find one.”

  “They’re illegal.”

  “I know,” he said.

  We stood. Stephen scuffed his boots on the rocks and looked off into the woods but didn’t seem to want to leave.

  “So what happens if I write this story?” I asked him.

  He breathed in deeply, then exhaled, long and slow.

  “Just more of it. Bobby gets all pumped up and thinks he’s this big deal and I get more shit at school. Situation normal, you know?”

  “And your mom?”

  “She goes along.”

  I thought for a moment.

  “Don’t the cops have it in for Bobby? All this talk. I mean, it is illegal.”

  “He don’t care. What are they gonna get him for? A couple plants, if they’re lucky. And oh, man, the trial would be a friggin’ circus. I don’t think they think it’d be worth it.”

  “They ever come out here and look around?”

  “A couple times.”

  “Pound around like a herd of elephants?”

  Stephen looked thoughtful and almost smiled.

  “No,” he said. “Not really. There was this one guy. He was pretty good. I was, like, stalking him, you know? He moved pretty good in the woods. Musta hunted a lot or something. I followed him for, like, a mile.”

  “He ever spot you?” I asked.

  This time Stephen did look at me.

  “Nope,” he said, and he smiled.

  “Then why’d you let me spot you? What was it, a penlight?”

  Stephen reached inside his sweatshirt and pulled it out. It was a magnesium flashlight, a small one.

  “You wanted to talk to me, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “To try to keep me from writing this story?”

  He shrugged.

  “It’d run in Boston, not Maine. Maybe the kids at school wouldn’t see it.”

  “It only takes one,” Stephen said. “I think some kids read the Boston Globe. For the sports.”

  “It’s my job,” I said.

  “You could write about something else.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Whatever.” Stephen sighed. He turned, as if to go.

  “Something I wanted to ask you,” I said.

  He turned back.

  “What’s the deal with this Coyote guy?”

  Stephen looked at me but as I watched him, he slipped away, somewhere behind his eyes.

  “Friend of Bobby’s,” he said.

  “Does he have another name?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He’s just here,” Stephen said quickly, and then he turned and headed off, not down the rocky road, but up into the woods, where he slipped silently between the saplings, and in just moments, had disappeared into the blackness and left me alone.

  I drove back to Prosperity in silence, no radio or tapes, and thought about Stephen and his short, unhappy life. The problem was that nobody put Stephen first. Not before marijuana. Not before roaming around the countryside, wheeling and dealing. Not before whatever relationship it was that kept Melanie and Bobby together.

  It wasn’t the first time a child had been relegated to second place. But still it was sad and unnecessary, and he seemed like a pretty good kid in spite of it all. It was cruel what fate handed children in the random crapshoot of birth. Stephen had been handed these people, this life, one for which he seemed so ill suited. But then, few kids are really cut out for loneliness and neglect. There still was hope for him, as long as that rifle didn’t drag him into a hole so deep he couldn’t climb back out.

  But his mother and Bobby had already dug him a bit of a hole, and a strange one it was. Gun-toting hippies with an organic garden. Herbal remedies and shotgun shells. Inner-city con men turned backwoods pot activists. It was an odd mix, but then, my few years in Maine had taught me not to try to fit the people into pigeonholes.

  People found their way to places like Florence, places like Prosperity, because they didn’t fit in those little holes. Or wouldn’t.

  And there was something likable about the Mullaney clan, with the exception of Coyote. But at the same time, none of it seemed to add up. Stephen didn’t fit with Bobby and Bobby didn’t fit with Melanie. Coyote didn’t fit with any of them, except perhaps with the side of Bobby that I hadn’t fully seen. When I did, something told me it would show more than a happy-go-lucky guy who traded a little reefer for truck parts.

  Much more.

  9

  It was Monday night and Roxanne was working late. She worked late Tuesdays through Thursdays, too, a dedication that I balanced by knocking off as early as possible.

  The house was dark when I swung open the door. It was lit when I opened the refrigerator and grabbed a can of ale, and then I closed the refrigerator and it was dark again. I opened the ale, took a sip, and dialed Roxanne’s direct line at the office by touch.

  “Hey, baby,” I said, when I heard the always reassuring sound of her voice.

  “Hey, baby yourself,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know. I spent the day with your buddies from the fair.”

  “My sympathies. How was it?”

  “Great. We got really stoned and listened to music and I told these really funny stories. At least they seemed funny.”

  “I’m sure,” Roxanne said.

  “And we’ve all decided to quit our jobs and follow, well, who do you follow now that Jerry Garcia’s gone?”

  “I don’t know. There must be somebody.”

  “Right,” I said. “All those Deadheads can’t just stay home. So we’ll get a VW bus and hit the road.”

  “Send me a postcard.”

  “You’re not coming? I thought you could wear tie-dye, have a new name. How ’bout ‘Hummus Girl’?”

  “I’m washing my hair that month,” Roxanne said.

  “Hey, you can wash it in a rest area. A communal shower. Maybe a farm pond full of muck. Weren’t you at Woodstock?”

  “I was two,” Roxanne said.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said.

  “You would have been about twelve.”

  “Don’t tell the guys. I told them I met Janis Joplin backstage.”

  “They won’t remember.”

  “Who won’t remember?”

  I wanted to talk but Roxanne sounded harried and hurried. I asked her what she was working on, and she said they were going to court in the morning to try to pull a ten-year-old girl.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “It’s confidential.”

  “It’s me.”

  “Well, she’s being physically abused at home. The mother is a sadist who gives her impossible chores to do, then punishes her when she can’t do them. She goes to school with black eyes, cut lips, bruises on her arms. She was given this thing called the Thematic Apperception Test—”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They show them pictures and ask them what they’re pictures of. She said a mother and daughter hugging was a woman choking a girl’s neck because the girl hadn’t put her laundry away. A man talking to a boy was a dad saying he was going to punch the boy’s teeth out if he didn’t eat all his supper.”

  “So what did that tell you?”

  “That the girl is seriously screwed up.”

  “What does the mother say?”

  “She says the girl is accident-prone. Won’t have a
nything to do with us.”

  “No dad?”

  “He’s drunk most of the time.”

  “God almighty. What’s the good news?”

  “Well, he doesn’t come home much. And they don’t have any other kids.”

  “And about to have none at all?”

  “I hope so. That depends on the judge,” Roxanne said.

  “And you.”

  “And me.”

  “The girl’s in good hands,” I said.

  “Not yet,” Roxanne said.

  I thought for a moment.

  “I’ve got one for you. This kid Stephen. Son of the woman who’s married to the guy who you met at the fair. High school kid. Kind of a loner. Wanders around the woods by himself with a twenty-two rifle. These people live in the absolute middle of nowhere. The kid’s dream is to live in town with a basketball hoop on the garage.”

  “To be like everybody else.”

  “Right. But he can’t because Bobby and Melanie—Bobby mostly, I think—have decided to hide out in the hills.”

  “And smoke pot.”

  “Well, it isn’t like they just sit around and get stoned all the time. But when they kick back, it’s probably with a pipe instead of a bourbon. The kid hates it. The smell. The legalization stuff. The talk. He doesn’t want me to write anything because the publicity gets him all this flak at school. The jock kids think he’s a freak. The freak kids don’t like him because he’s not one of them, either.”

  “The poor kid.”

  “Yeah. I feel badly for him. He’s really not a bad kid.”

  “He talked to you?”

  “Yeah. I think he sort of wanted to apologize.”

  “For what?” Roxanne asked.

  “Oh, I didn’t tell you that. For shooting my truck.”

  “What?”

  “But it was only in the back end.”

  “So I’m supposed to feel better?”

  “Well, he is a crack shot,” I said.

  So I wished Roxanne luck, said I wanted to see her soon. She said she wanted to see me, too, so we could talk. And other things. I asked her which other things those were. She said I knew. She was right.

  That night I fixed dinner: a tuna sandwich and tomato soup. Campbell’s. Opening the can, I felt a little like I was selling out. I would have made salad, but it was too dark to be foraging on the roadside.