Hit Count

by Chris Lynch

  Every year the four of us would get up and open our gifts, then get dressed nice, go to church together—yes, the four of us. After that we would drive two hours north to spend the remainder of Christmas Day with various relatives on my father’s side, or two hours south to spend it with my mother’s people. This was a due-north year.

  As always my parents paid close attention to selecting things that matched up thoughtfully with the person who was on the receiving end. Once again they came through, and I opened up some classy high-­end shaving gear and cologne as well as several items of underarmor underwear designed for athletes that cost more than almost any overarmor attire I’d be covering them with. Equally thoughtful, perhaps more surprising, though, was when Lloyd opened his gift from them to find a seriously serious leather motorcycle jacket like professional racers wore.

  He had put in the hours to get the bike in good working order, and was working as a courier. The jacket he usually wore was so threadbare that mosquitoes could penetrate it at high speed. Lloyd stared at the jacket, squeezed it, and pulled it, nodding at the quality of the thing. “Thanks, guys,” he said, kind of whispery.

  Their choice of gift was a statement, an investment in whatever modest undertaking he was willing to pursue. I hoped it would be worth it.

  For my part, I dipped into my modest lawn-­hedge-­leaf maintenance money—which came from my parents in the first place—to give them a pass to the community cinema that would cover their two-­for-­one date nights for the year, including popcorn and a medium drink they were going to have to share.

  Lloyd’s and my tradition with each other had long been cheap and comical gifts for the occasion, so when he opened up his can of meadow-fresh bathroom deodorizer spray and I opened up my economy-size tube of Ben-­Gay muscle ointment, we were both gracious and grateful for the thoughtfulness.

  But it was Lloyd who stopped the presses and the clocks and probably Dad’s heartbeat for a few seconds by not only remembering the holiday gift-­giving tradition but also presenting the folks with a Fruit-­of-­the-­Month Club subscription that was so high quality we all briefly gathered around the illustrated brochure like a 1930s family around a big wooden radio. As each page revealed another exotic fruit that was hand-­grown, hand-­wrapped and, no doubt, was going to be hand-­delivered, it just reinforced my suspicion that Lloyd’s job as a courier wasn’t quite what he made it out to be.

  We all ignored our thoughts about how Lloyd had paid for his gift, though, and a good quiet settled in then, the quiet that floated on Ma’s cinnamon candle scent, and on her Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Messiah recording that played low while everyone disappeared into their bedrooms to get dressed and move on to the next stage of the day. It was, in a modest and mildly surprising Brodie way, as fine a morning as we’d had all year.

  Which could have explained the dejected look on Ma’s face when Lloyd came out of his room not in his holiday glad rags but in his usual grunge plus one deadly sharp leather jacket.

  “What?” he said, seeing Ma’s expression. “Aw, you didn’t think I was gonna go to church. C’mon, Ma, I hung in there a long time, but this year I have officially lost my faith.”

  “So?” Dad said. “What’s that got to do with anything? It’s Christmas.”

  “Sorry, no,” he said. “But tell Uncle Rodney and Aunt Babs ho-­ho for me. And grab some of those whoopie pies to bring home if you can.”

  I didn’t think this was such a terrible turn, myself, now that I thought about it. I had heard a lot of people tell stories of relatives acting up something horrible at Christmas, and this was certainly preferable to that. Dad surely agreed, because he headed out the door without a word. “I’ll be warming up the car.”

  But Ma was going to take some time to adjust to this new state of things.

  “Son?” she said, making him wince with the very word. “Are you sure about this?”

  He pretended to get all casual and busy as he put on his helmet and failed to look at her as he followed Dad outside. “Gotta work, Ma,” he said, shrugging.

  “Who has to work on Christmas?” she asked, pursuing him to his bike. “Who needs courier service on Christmas?”

  “Santa Claus,” he said, and then proceeded immediately with the kicking to life of the bike’s engine.

  “Ho-­ho-­ho-­house,” I said to the empty place as I shut the door behind me.

  A New Year

  “You want to come running, with me?” I said into the phone as I pulled on my socks.

  “Yes, I do,” Sandy said.

  “Listen, I’m okay with that, Sandy, but I’m gonna tell you now that I have to keep up my pace. If you can keep up, then great, but you can’t expect me to slow down. Holidays are over. This is training for real now, not for fun.”

  “Okay, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll try not to be a drag on your training, sir.”

  “Good,” I said, ignoring her mockery because the “sir” thing sounded pretty nice. “I’ll come by your place in a little bit. While you’re waiting, you should do some stretching. Hamstrings, Achilles tendons, calves . . . Do you know these stretches, or will you need me to show you when I get there?”

  “Ohhh,” she drawled “ I will neeeed you to show silly little me.”

  “Hey, wise guy, I just don’t want to see you get hurt. And it is cold, but don’t overdress. Layers are key. If you come outside in some old bulky sweats—well, you might as well just go right back inside again.”

  “Arlo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you trying to make me regret this idea? Because if you’d just rather not have company on your run, then I’d rather you just came out and said it. Because I’d hate to think you would think you needed to go to all this trouble just to discourage me. Or worse, that you are seriously this much of a snore on the subject.”

  I paused long enough to let her think about her behavior.

  “I am not a snore, on any subject. And I would love your company.”

  “Good. Shut up now and get over here.” She hung up then, which was probably for the best.

  By the time I had reached Sandy’s house, she was out front and running through her stretches of all the important areas.

  “Well done,” I said.

  “Thanks, Coach. How long do you usually like to run?”

  “Sometimes three miles, sometimes five.”

  “How ’bout we do three today?” she said, bouncing up and down and toggling her neck muscles all around.

  “Of course,” I said, giving her a minibow. “Remember, though, don’t tear out at too quick a pace or you’ll never make it.”

  “Right,” she said. “Okay, I’ll watch it. So from right here if we go straight up Belgrade, to the private tennis courts on Cypress, go around the tennis courts, and come straight back, that’s a solid three miles right there.”

  “Really?” I said as she stretched her calves once more, pushing up against a maple tree in the corner of the yard.

  “Really,” she said when she was done. “Ready, and we’re off.”

  And so she was.

  “Pace yourself,” I reminded her, hoping at the same time she wasn’t planning on a lot of chatter during the run.

  As it turned out, there wasn’t another word of chatter until the run was done.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” I said, striding up to the front of her house at least two minutes behind her. She was sitting on the porch with her legs stretched out down the steps in front of her, leaning toward her toes to stretch those hamstrings. “What’s the story, jackrabbit?”

  I was way more winded than her.

  “The story is, you should have paced yourself, young man.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I should have. But you didn’t need to. Why?”

  “Because I am an experienced runner, Arlo. What did you think I did with myself while you were building Starlo, Master of the Universe? Sitting around eating caramel popcorn and watching soap operas? I told you before, stud, I’m not going t
o let myself get fat if you’re not. Stretch those hammies before they freeze up.”

  I bent into the task as quickly as if Coach Fisk had screamed it at me. Then when I was down there, I started groaning.

  “You’re really good, Sandy. A natural runner.”

  “That’s what Gordon said,” she said. “That’s why I started running more seriously, on the island.”

  Gordon.

  “I am going to Nantucket this summer,” I insisted.

  “We’ll see,” she said, sitting up there on the porch like it was a throne, and lording it over me good. Just as she should have.

  ***

  We ran together sometimes after that, more often apart since we had different agendas. Dinos and I had a loose schedule we kept up through the winter and into the spring, which was looser for him than it was for me but I understood. He was going into senior year, and football was very much part-­time for him, very much just a piece of the delicious senior-­year pie he said he planned to savor bite by bite.

  In the spring I was more the sideline fan anyway, as Sandy made the track team, competing at three thousand and five thousand meters. This made it a little less weird and a little more fun when I once again worked out with the track team without joining the track team.

  I got to stay in shape, and hover around my girl all the time, too.

  Could it get any more win-­win than that?

  Island Arlo

  “So where you goin’, big man?”

  Damn. I hated that. When he called me big man it meant his shoulder boulder had grown so massive it was crushing him and he needed somebody to knock it off for him.

  “I’m going to Nantucket, Lloyd,” I said and continued to jam a week’s worth of stuff into a bag that had The Weekender printed on an inside label.

  “Oooh, Nantucket. Nanfucktucket and kissitgoodnight. How’d you ever get a pass onto that snobby little island?”

  “Sandy and her family rent a place there every summer for a month.”

  “A month? You’re going there for a month? Goin’ for it now, boy, ain’t ya? Seriously think you’re leaving the riffraffers behind.”

  “I’m only going for a week,” I said.

  “Oh, good,” he said, draping himself over me and almost toppling us both onto the bag and the bed. “There was no way I could get more than a week off of work.”

  Oh, dear god.

  “You’re not coming, Lloyd.”

  “What? Why not? We used to do everything together. Remember? I never left you behind.”

  “Yeah?” I said, stuffing random socks and shorts into the bag and zipping it up before I could get drawn into this any further. “Well, we called ahead, and Nantucket said, unfortunately, you’re banned.” I grabbed up the bag and pulled a spin move that left him toppled on my bed.

  “Dammit,” he said, lying there comfy and motionless, “I’m running out of islands.”

  “Yeah,” I said, leaving him there to go get some stuff from the bathroom, “maybe next time.”

  He had no response, which was good. I came back to my room a few minutes later to find him gone, which was also good. Finding my bag also gone was something else entirely.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I said as I found him jamming his own stuff into my bag. Half of my things were dumped onto his bed and the floor.

  “I just figure we should consolidate, share one bag. No sense overpacking.”

  “Lloyd . . . ,” I said, my teeth hurting already from gritting them so hard.

  “Like, for instance,” he said, holding up the box of condoms he had found in the bag. “I know you ain’t gonna need these, Humpty Dumpty.” He leered at me, with such utter, demented sleaze, he managed to look like some mangy scuzzball with half his teeth missing. But for the moment, he still had them all.

  If I lost my cool now, it would only inspire him.

  “I need my bag,” I said, walking calmly right up to him and taking the box of condoms out of his hand. His expression didn’t change, and it was hard to be up so close to its creepiness.

  “Of course you do,” he said after several more uncomfortable seconds ticked away. He started removing his things from the bag while I collected mine and dumped them back in. “Relax, will ya?” he said as I took the bag and walked back to my room. “You’re no fun anymore. You really do need this vacation.”

  I didn’t answer, just went silently and quickly back to my room, finished packing, and spun for the door.

  Where I found him, the leer on his face and a backpack over his shoulder.

  “You are not coming.”

  “I could have pissed in your bag, you know.”

  “You’re not coming.”

  “Could have pissed in your bag, but I didn’t. Could have done a lot of things, but I didn’t.”

  “What, am I supposed to thank you?”

  “’Course not. Think I don’t know by now you’re a fuckin’ ingrate?”

  “I have to go, Lloyd. And you have to stay. And that’s that.”

  I walked toward the door, and he stayed, blocking it. “Maybe that’s not that, big man. Maybe this is that. And maybe you should stop hurting my feelings.”

  I practically spit laughter in his face. “Your feel—”

  “Laugh away, big man. Though, if you really want to get out of here, maybe you should stop acting like you can tell me where I am going and where I’m not going.”

  I knew he could go on with this kind of thing forever, since time only appeared to matter to one of us.

  “I would appreciate it if you stayed home, Lloyd. This time.” I said, feeling my face flush with restrained rage.

  He stepped aside, nodding happily. “And I’ll keep an eye on your room for ya,” he said as I stormed out the door. “In case anything happens to it.”

  ***

  “Is that what he said?” Sandy said as we hung together over the rail of the ferry. I had given her a highly edited version of events, ending at the part about all the islands he’d been banned from.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “He’s a barrel of laughs to spend time with. As long as the time is limited to like a minute and a half. After that it’s downhill, and he can be kind of unpleasant and dangerous. Or sometimes before that.”

  “Does he need help, Arlo?”

  “Help? What, like professional help or something? No, no, he just needs direction, something. I still think if he had just held it together for that one more day . . . he might have gotten into the army, and then we wouldn’t even be here talking about him now.”

  “You’re the one who brought up the subject.”

  “Hmmm,” I said, “I don’t know why I even did that.”

  “Well, as long as you did, what do you think is wrong with him, aside from being just plain nuts? I mean, you know him better than anybody, right? You knew him when he was partway normal, yes? Sounds to me like it goes beyond Lloyd just needing something to do. What are you thinking?”

  I was thinking this was making me way uneasy, trying to hang words on what I thought might be wrong with my brother. Who was I to do that? And when I did sometimes let myself go there, I got right back out again because I didn’t like even the notion of diagnosing the guy, never mind the possible ramifications.

  I was thinking that ferries steaming toward Nantucket on perfect late-­July days with perfect girls like Sandy were supposed to be a vacation from thinking.

  “I was hoping we could leave Lloyd behind for now. Could we do that?” I asked her as the wind whipped us and the sun toasted us.

  “Of course we can, for now,” she said, leaning into me as we leaned into the sea breeze.

  I hated that for now.

  ***

  I had never been on an island before, but I quickly understood what people meant about the whole pace of life being different, the relaxed feeling that was everywhere.

  “I could get used to this,” I said on the third straight hot and sunny day. Sandy and I were in the water, far fro
m the shore, watching the island posing pretty for us.

  “Yeah,” she said, kind of dreamy, “every year when we return I think I’m not ever going to want to leave here again.”

  “Yeah, now that I see the place for myself, I’m going to always worry when you leave that I’ll never see you again.”

  “Ah, don’t be silly. By the third week I usually get tired of it. But if I don’t, I’ll send for you.”

  “Good. My bags will be packed.”

  Those first days were unreal to me in the best way. Sandy’s sister and her family wouldn’t be down until the next week—taking over my room—and her folks were totally relaxed about doing their own thing and leaving Sandy to do hers. So we had a kind of freedom and space . . . and calm that I had never quite experienced before.

  It agreed with me.

  “I haven’t gone this long without breaking into a run in a long time,” I said as we took another long, easy walk through dunes and beach grass and out to the squat lighthouse.

  “Yeah,” she said, “I didn’t want to mention that in case you panicked and started running laps of the island and lifting cars up over your head and stuff. But seriously, three days now and nothing but walking and cycling for exercise. I’m impressed with Island Arlo.”

  Of course, as she put it into words, Mainland Arlo suddenly started rustling around inside, agitating.

  “Well, I guess my muscles—our muscles—earned a short rest after this year.”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “I think I am almost all rested up now, ready to get back to work.”

  She sighed and laughed at the same time. “Well, see you around, Island Arlo. It was nice knowing you.”

  Oh, jeez. Down, Mainland Arlo, relax just a little longer.

  I took her hand and started tugging her away from the water and toward the fried clam shack that had already become Island Arlo’s favorite place to eat.

  “Hey,” I said, “third straight day of fried food. I think we can agree that Island Arlo hasn’t left us just yet.”

  “Good,” she said cheerily. “A little bit of summer fat never hurt anybody, right?”