The Scar Boys

by Len Vlahos

  Richie, Penny, and Chuck were sitting on the back stoop consoling Cheyenne, who was crying uncontrollably. Richie looked visibly shaken.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We had a call,” Chuck began, and paused. An alarm bell went off in my head. It seemed like he didn’t know how to continue. I waited. “It was from New York,” he said. The alarm bell became an air-raid siren. “It’s your friend, Johnny. There’s been an accident.”

  DEAD MAN’S CURVE

  (written by Jan Berry, Roger Christian, Arthur Kornfield, and Brian Wilson, and performed by Jan & Dean)

  My first thought on hearing Johnny was in an accident was:

  Serves him right.

  I know, I know. I’m a complete and utter dick. But you have to look at it from my point of view. Everything about my life got better the moment Johnny McKenna exited stage left. And it wasn’t just Cheyenne. Yes, connecting with her was awesome. But there was so much more. Without Johnny around to control my every move, without him to remind me, overtly or otherwise, that I needed to be cared for, that I could never be more than one of the sheep, I went through a kind of metamorphosis. It was finally my turn to become a butterfly. Strike that. Maybe it’s better to say I became a moth. Either way, I was no longer the caterpillar, the sheep, the lackey, the number two. With Johnny gone, I was my own man. It would be my wings flapping now and causing thunderstorms, or whatever else. It was freedom. Wonderful, wonderful freedom.

  So yeah, there was a measure of satisfaction deep in my gut when I heard that Johnny’d been in an accident. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but it’s the truth.

  Of course, if I probe deeper I can see that my years of kowtowing to Johnny weren’t really his fault. They were my own fault. Every toady needs a boss and I was no different. We were symbionts. Fonzie and Richie. No wait. That’s not right. Richie had too much moxie. Maybe Fonzie and Potsie. Huh, I guess I was the real Potsie all along. Anyway, after I thought about it for a minute, after I let my brain take over for my heart, I did feel bad. Just not as bad as I should have.

  I listened as Richie told me the story:

  Johnny had made it to New York by suppertime on that first day. He had taken a bus to Atlanta and used his cash to buy an airplane ticket. His parents met him at the airport and drove him home. It was later than usual for Johnny’s evening run, but he told his mother that a lot had happened and he needed to clear his head.

  The sky was already dark purple when Johnny walked out the door and quickened his step. With the moon in its new phase, it didn’t take long for all the color to seep into the stars and for the night to turn black.

  Johnny ran his usual route, up Colonial Parkway, up Underhill, across Grandview Boulevard, and down Alta Vista Drive. That’s where the car hit him.

  Alta Vista is a narrow road with lots of curves that ends in a steep hill. Even in the glow of a midday sun, it would be easy for a person on foot to get in the way of a car. On a moonless night, it’s almost guaranteed.

  Johnny ran that route often, and he knew how to listen for and look out for cars. I’m not sure how he found himself in a position where he couldn’t get out of the way, but that’s what happened.

  The car slammed Johnny into a tree, pinning his right leg to the tree trunk. He managed to hold on to consciousness for the next twenty-five minutes, until an ambulance arrived. I have to believe that that was the worst part, the not passing out.

  His leg from just below the right knee was hanging on by a stretch of skin and some ligaments. The bone had been completely fractured in two. I can’t even begin to imagine what that pain was like.

  Wait, strike that. Yes. Yes I can.

  Johnny was rushed to the hospital where a team of doctors spent twelve excruciating hours trying to save the leg, only to amputate it in the end.

  It was all too incredible to believe.

  Chey stood, tears bubbling out of her eyes, but somehow she kept her voice calm and steady. “I need to be alone,” she said, and retreated to her bedroom.

  Penny hugged Richie, and the two of them went inside. Chuck started to say something to me then thought better of it and stopped. He shrugged his shoulders and went inside, too, leaving me there alone. So I walked.

  I don’t really remember where I went or what I did. But I walked all day. By the time I got back to the house, the sun was going down and Chey was gone. She’d taken a third of the money we’d earned at the fund-raiser, taken her bass, and left us a note. It said, “Gone to see Johnny.”

  For the second time in my eighteen years, a random event was turning my life completely upside down. I had just begun to learn how to live with the first random event, the lightning strike, and now this. Now fucking this.

  Yeah, this new thing hadn’t happened to me, it had happened to Johnny. But that didn’t seem to matter. Everything that was important to me was about to crumble away, again. If I ever felt cursed—and I’d spent a lot of my life feeling cursed—it was at that moment, standing in Athens, Georgia, holding Cheyenne’s note.

  GOING HOME

  (written and performed by Mark Knopfler)

  Johnny was hit by a twenty-one-year-old kid who had graduated our high school three years earlier. His name was Ronny Petrillo and he was so drunk that after he hit Johnny, he stumbled out of the car and passed out on the side of the road. It wasn’t until someone else drove by and saw Johnny pinned between the car and the tree, and Ronny curled up on the asphalt like he was at home, snug in bed, that they called the police.

  I remember Ronny. He was one of the cud-chewing cave trolls who attempted to rule the school with brute force. He and his gang wore leather jackets all day, every day, and kept unlit cigarettes behind their ears, like they’d watched Welcome Back, Kotter or The Warriors one too many times. There was an exchange student in their year, a quiet boy from Budapest, who they’d beat senseless just because he had a “funny” accent. Welcome to the USA, kid.

  I’d had only one direct encounter with Ronny. In my freshman year I was standing outside the school, just sort of hanging out, like lots of kids do. I usually knew better. Guys like me have to keep moving. As soon as we stand still, we’re easy targets. Kind of like gazelles on the Serengeti.

  Anyway, I was standing in front of the school wearing a pair of sunglasses, when Ronny, then a senior, walked by. In one motion he took the sunglasses off my face, dropped them in his own path, crushed them with his next step, and kept walking. He wasn’t with a group of friends, so there was no audience, and he never looked back at me. Of all the insult and injury I’ve suffered in my life, it is the clearest example of pure, undiluted malice I can recall. It was meanness without purpose.

  When the police took Ronny away after he hit Johnny, he was so messed up that he stayed passed out on the car ride to the police station and all through the night. They couldn’t read him his rights and book him until the next morning.

  With Chey gone, there was nothing for Richie and me to do but go home. The sixteen-hour trip was the quietest car ride of my life. The only meaningful conversation we had lasted less than one minute and it took place just south of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

  “That really sucks about Johnny,” Richie said.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?”

  “I have no idea.”

  And that was it.

  I could tell from the tone of Richie’s voice that he was pretty freaked out. I would’ve tried to comfort him if I hadn’t been so freaked out, too.

  When we got back to Yonkers at one a.m., Richie dropped me at home and kept the car. We both figured that it made more sense for Richie and his dad to fix it up or sell it.

  The moonless night had brewed a deep gloom in Colonial Heights, the neighborhood I called home. The shadows were so complete that while I could see the outline of my house when we pulled up, I couldn’t see any detail. Not that there was much to see. I grew up in a nondescript split-level home; the outside a
combination of white shingle and fake brick that must’ve been popular sometime in the 1950s or ’60s because half the houses in the neighborhood looked pretty much the same.

  The closest streetlamp, two houses down, cast just enough light for me to see the giant oak that rose from the edge of our driveway. The tree was old, probably older than the house itself, and its roots had been churning up the yard and front walk for as long as I could remember. I’d played with Matchbox cars and plastic army men in the nooks and crannies at the base of that tree when I was little, or so some old family photos have led me to believe. That was before the lightning strike, before my memory circuits were fried.

  I’d telephoned my parents when Richie and I left Athens to let them know I was coming home. It was the first time I’d called them since we left New York, and I could hear the relief in my mother’s voice. It turns out they’d heard about Johnny and had been trying to reach me.

  I crept into the house, figuring my folks would be asleep. They weren’t. They were both on the landing just inside the front door. My mother had me in a bear hug before I could put my guitar down. It didn’t take long until I was hugging her back and crying on her robe. I didn’t know until that moment how much I’d missed my mom and how much everything hurt. When we finally let each other go, my dad wrapped his arms around me and held on tighter and longer than I thought he would or could.

  It was good to be home.

  I told my parents how tired I was and that I would catch them up on everything the next day. They said they understood and went back upstairs, and I went downstairs to my bedroom.

  I don’t know why I was surprised to see the room exactly as I’d left it. I’d been away less than a month, but it felt like I was walking into a museum exhibit. Step right up and see the real live habitat of a late twentieth-century boy. A Blondie poster, with Debbie Harry standing tall and lean in fishnet stockings stood watch over the twin bed, still made with New York Mets sheets. The shelves of the bookcases, loaded with comic books and science fiction novels, were sagging and looked ready to fall. And in one corner of the room, an old nylon-string acoustic guitar sat propped against the wall.

  I flopped down on the creaking bed feeling like Gulliver. Everything in my life that had come before Athens seemed so small and distant. I fell into an uneasy sleep, tortured by a dream of having lost my guitar in the basement of the house in Georgia. Every time I thought I caught a glimpse of it, an army of jumping spiders blocked my way. When I woke late the next morning, I was disoriented. Part of me didn’t know where I was, and part of me didn’t know when I was.

  My parents were camped out in the kitchen sharing the local newspaper when I entered. They both smiled at me and said hello. There was something wrong with their greeting. It was too nice, too forced. I stopped in my tracks.

  “What’s going on?”

  “What?” my father asked. “Can’t we just be happy to see you?”

  I looked at them both for a long moment. “No,” I said.

  “Harry,” my mother began, “Dr. Hirschorn called us.”

  Of course. Dr. Kenny. After my late-night, deranged call from the phone booth in Athens, Dr. Kenny had called my parents. Ugh.

  “We’d like you to start seeing him again,” my father added. “We’ll pay for it, of course.” I thought maybe there was a tinge of resentment in his offer to pay. But maybe I imagined it, too. Something about my dad looked broken, defeated. The lines on his face seemed deeper, his hairline looked higher on his forehead.

  A lot flashed through my mind. I thought about the sessions with Dr. Kenny from when I was younger and how much they helped me. I wondered if his office was still the same. I wondered if eighteen-year-olds were even allowed to see pediatric psychiatrists, I wondered if he would put me on meds. But with all those thoughts crashing through my brain, I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no. So I said nothing.

  “We’ve made an appointment for you for next Wednesday,” my father added. He looked like he didn’t have any fight left in him. I probably could’ve refused the appointment with Dr. Kenny, but the truth is, I didn’t have any fight left in me either.

  I shrugged my shoulders and nodded agreement.

  I had that conversation with my parents on a Friday. I spent the next few days lounging around the house, eating sugar-coated cereal, watching sitcom reruns on television, and trying not to think about anything. Other than my mom and dad, I talked to no one. Not even Richie, who’d called a couple of times. I think I needed to detox.

  I didn’t even play the guitar. Every time I had the urge, I’d look at the guitar case and be reminded of too much bad crap. I didn’t know if I’d ever play again.

  TIME’S UP

  (written by Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley, and performed by the Buzzcocks)

  Dr. Kenny and I picked up right where we’d left off five years earlier—me on the couch staring up at the Sharpie drawings of rock stars that lined his office walls, and Kenny in the big comfy chair at my side, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

  The couch felt like a bit of a cliché. You see it in every hackneyed movie or television show about psychiatry. But when I first began my appointments as an eight-year-old, I was so physically weak from the trauma of my ordeal that lying down was easier than sitting up, and the couch became my spot. Old habits die hard, I guess.

  While the whole experience felt very familiar to me, some things had changed, too. Most notably, Dr. Kenny.

  The streaks of gray that had flecked the black hair at Dr. Kenny’s temples when I was younger were now peppered across his entire head. But it wasn’t just the hair that made him seem older. There was a sadness about Dr. Kenny that hadn’t been there before. Like the world had beaten him down. His insides had gone from the warm glow of halogen light to the cold glare of fluorescence. The best way to describe the Dr. Kenny from my youth was the Iggy Pop song “Lust for Life”; now he seemed to fit better with Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life” instead.

  I’d noticed a similar thing with my dad, and it made me wonder if people, when they reach a certain age, forget how to be happy. Like maybe they grow up to become what they were once rebelling against, and it makes them sad without even knowing it.

  I asked Dr. Kenny about the sadness at our second session. I was still getting him caught up on everything that’d happened to me since I’d “abandoned him”—his words, not mine—but his attention seemed to wander. I asked if he was okay.

  “You really want to know?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “I lost a patient two years ago,” he said. He must’ve seen me look perplexed, because he added, “Suicide.”

  Dr. Kenny is a gentle and sensitive soul. I can’t begin to imagine how that would’ve made him feel. No wonder he was so freaked out by my phone call from Athens.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked. Dr. Kenny looked at me like he’d never seen me before. And that’s the other thing that had changed about our relationship: Me.

  I was broken almost beyond repair when Dr. Kenny and I found one another in 1976, and our bond developed as one of teacher and student. Much like my relationship with Johnny or my father, I was beta to Dr. Kenny’s alpha, though in a far more loving and constructive way. He asked the questions, I evaded the answers.

  But that kid was gone, replaced by an older, more complicated Harbinger Jones. That this new model had the wherewithal, the balls, to ask a direct and caring question like, “Do you want to talk about it?” must’ve thrown Dr. Kenny for a loop.

  “Thanks, Harry,” he finally said. “I really appreciate that, but I can’t violate doctor-patient confidentiality.”

  “Even if the patient is … gone?”

  “Even if the patient is gone,” he answered, choking on the word.

  “Huh,” I grunted in response. He grunted, too.

  I told Dr. Kenny everything. From Dave’s odd disappearance from the band, to meeting Cheyenne, to cutting a record, to buying a van
, to seeing Johnny and Cheyenne do it, to everything that happened in Georgia. I omitted nothing. It took me nearly three sessions to get it all out.

  “And that brings us to the here and now, Dr. K,” I said near the end of my third visit.

  Dr. Kenny had stayed on the edge of his chair through my whole narrative, only interrupting when he needed to ask a question or clarify a point. He looked at me for a long moment when I finished, then sat back, took off his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on, and then looked at me some more. I knew this trick. He was trying to get me to say the one thing I wasn’t saying. It almost always worked. But not this time. I really didn’t know what the one thing was.

  Then Dr. Kenny surprised me. Strike that. He blew me right out of the god damn water.

  “You know, Harry,” he said, “sometimes you can be such a schmuck.”

  The only time Dr. Kenny had ever said anything remotely like this to me was when I was twelve years old. For something like our fifth straight session I was coming in with schoolyard bruises to show him, visible reminders that socially I was lower than a pariah and only barely higher than a corpse. In fact, that’s exactly what I told Dr. Kenny.

  “Socially I’m lower than a pariah and only barely higher than a corpse.”

  I was kind of pleased with that line. I’d thought of it earlier in the week and had been waiting for my session with Dr. Kenny to use it. Apparently, it didn’t play very well.

  “Dammit, Harry,” he’d said. Dr. Kenny never swore with me. “Don’t you ever stand up for yourself?”

  I was stunned into complete silence. Dr. Kenny ran his hands through the shaggy mop on his head and immediately apologized. I’m not sure what prompted him to go so far off his script. Was he stressed over stuff in his personal life? Problems with another patient? Had he just had enough of me? Whatever it was, it hurt. It took another two sessions to coax me back out of my shell.