The Summer I Died

by Ryan C. Thomas

  That you’re insane, I wanted to say. Instead, I just smiled and said, “I gotta help Too-I mean Merv.”

  He looked at me, eyes back from their holiday at the seminary, and took a sip of his beer. “Now wait, I’m getting to my point. I’ve been sitting out here all morning thinking on that, and I came up with a theory. What if every person has a purpose in life, but not one they can necessarily see or are even aware of. Like me for instance. Sure I drink, I don’t deny it. I got my problems-hell, we all got our problems-but suppose that’s my purpose, suppose my drinking causes a reaction somewhere else. And suppose that reaction is doing some good. Why else would He have drawn a cross in wine? See, Jesus was born to die on that cross, saved humanity by giving His life on it. That cross was His purpose for being. I think He was telling me my purpose in life was to drink-my cross, if you will, is to drink wine. . or beer anyway.”

  He looked down at his beer can, kind of chuckled; this was fucking torture. I could feel time stopping, the hair growing on my legs.

  He continued: “I mean, beer, wine, same thing really. I just wish I knew how it was helping.”

  If ever there was a man trying to justify his vices, Tooth’s dad was him. I don’t believe in God; I guess because my parents never made me go to church, but I do like to think there are things out there, out beyond space and time, that have a better understanding of life. Not in a religious way; I don’t think we should worship them, but it’s nice to think we’re not alone. And perhaps someday we’ll meet up with them, whatever they are, and learn from them. But I sure as shit didn’t think Jesus, even if He did exist, would make an appearance just to get a man drinking. First time I heard this story, I figured someone in their bathrobe must have stopped to get a drink from the fountain, saw that it was flowing with rust, and walked away. The blue cross? Who knows? Reflection from overhead lights most likely. I just figured the old man’s brain was pickled.

  “Could be, Mr. Elliott. But I gotta help Merv.”

  “Help him with what?”

  Tooth’s father didn’t complain much about what Tooth did, but guns were something else. He might be a drunk, but he was still a good man.

  “We’re gonna grab some tools and go work on my mom’s car,” I lied.

  He took another swig of his beer and looked out toward the road. “Want me to help?” he asked. “I’m good with cars.”

  Like the cavalry, Tooth popped his head out the door and said, “Roger, c’mon, before the Second Coming. We got shit to do.”

  I left Mr. Elliot on the porch with his beer and followed Tooth to his room. It was as messy as it had been the last time I was there. A mattress on the floor covered with a sleeping bag, a small television on an old footlocker with a Playstation beside it. The floor seemed to be made of used clothes so rank with stink they’d fused together like a giant quilt. Several beer bottles sat atop the furniture, reeking of week-old Budweiser. Not to mention it was so hot inside you could spit and it would evaporate before it hit the floor.

  In the corner was a dresser with every drawer pulled out so that it looked like poorly-constructed steps. Tooth slid it out from the wall and pulled out another black case like the one we’d just brought in. He opened it up. Inside, a black 9mm lay like a sleeping adder. He took it out and handed it to me.

  “Feel how light it is.”

  I hefted it and aimed it at the wall. It was far lighter than the.44, maybe about two pounds tops, and smaller as well. It fit in my hand like it had been built only for me.

  “Make sure you check the chamber before you go pulling the trigger,” he told me. “Never too sure when I’m drunk whether I clear it out or not. More than once I found a bullet in there.”

  I used both hands and cocked it like I’d seen in so many movies, sliding the chamber back and letting it snap forward again.

  “It’s empty,” I told him.

  He was smiling at me, like Dr. Frankenstein marveling at his monster. I must have looked hypnotized because he poked me. “Go ahead, pull the trigger, see how little tension there is.”

  I pulled the trigger with ease and the gun went click. A wave of anticipation washed over me and left me feeling a little disturbed. I’d never been a gun freak before and didn’t know how to handle this new sense of power the weapon carried. I felt almost guilty for wanting to shoot it, see what type of destruction it could do. There was a wrongness to it all, so I handed it back and watched him put it in the case.

  “How much did these cost you?” I asked.

  “Got ’em both used, which is why the targeting is slightly off. Four hundred for the 9mm and six hundred for the.44.”

  “That’s a lot of dough. If you’re making that kind of money why don’t you move out and get an apartment or something?”

  He took two small bags out from behind the dresser. The first was a bag of marijuana, which he squeezed and then stuck in his back pocket. The second was small and black, and from it he removed some cleaning materials, including a little wire brush, some oil and a few rags, and began cleaning the.44. “Remember when I said I was gonna go to California?”

  “Yeah, you say it all the time.”

  “No, you remember when we were in jail and I said it?”

  I remembered. That was the first time he told me he wanted to get away from everything.

  “Well, that was the night I told myself I was really going to do it,” he said. “I started putting some money away every week since then. Nickels and dimes at first, then about twenty dollars a week since I got the job at Dataview. I’ve got myself a nice little stash. Three grand right now, and I still got some bills to pay, and I owe Dad a few months’ rent, but as soon as I hit five I’m leaving.”

  “If you hadn’t bought the guns you’d have four grand.”

  “And if I hadn’t fixed up that Camaro I could have left long ago, but I’d have had to walk there. These guns, they’re a bit of insurance. Besides, it’s not like it’s a bad thing to know how to shoot straight.” He stopped cleaning the gun, took off his hat and wiped the sweat from above his eyes. He looked at me with one of those looks that make people feel uncomfortable, like he was going to tell me how I’d die. “Quit that college shit and come out with me.”

  “I can’t quit college, you know that.”

  “No, I don’t. And yes, you can. You said you want to draw comics. Having a degree isn’t going to accomplish that. All it’s gonna do is get you nice little cubicle next to someone else’s nice little cubicle, where the two of you will swap family photos and talk about how cute your kids’ poopie is. You don’t need to study economics to get a job drawing Batman. You just need a pencil and paper and the know-how to draw a fucking cape and horns and-voila! — you’re living your dream.”

  The sad thing was, he had a point. I wasn’t sure why I was going to college, other than it was what you were supposed to do, and my dad would rip my asshole out through my mouth if I quit. Also, I’d been conditioned to believe that a college diploma was like a skeleton key to the world. I was banking on that somewhat.

  California would be great. I could see us now, surfing, drinking, just soaking in the sun. Probably be the only two idiots rooting for the Red Sox when they came to town. But, for now, it wasn’t in the cards for me. Would Tooth wait? No, he’d go, and he’d move on without me. I could feel it happening already, the slow separation of our lives. We’d survived this first year of college, but we hadn’t seen each other much. Adulthood was coming in like a wedge to our friendship. Was this summer our last one together, the final hoorah for the road?

  I heard Mr. Elliot come in the house and open the refrigerator, clank beer bottles together, and saw Tooth scrub a little bit harder at the.44’s barrel. The fridge door closing was followed by some serious coughs and a loogie being hacked up from so far down it probably had “Made in China” stamped on it.

  “Is he all right?” I asked.

  “Who knows. I ain’t seen him sober in a while but he don’t bug me either so. . He
says God will take care of him, and then he starts preaching to me about faith and I have to run out of the house. He quit working at the mill a few months ago and filed for workman’s comp when a log fell on his leg. You don’t need to be Kreskin to know he was drunk and caused the thing to fall on himself.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live with his father, watching the man seep down through the floorboards of degradation before your eyes. But that was the life Tooth chose and, thus far, he hadn’t seemed to mind it let alone try to fix the problem. I guess some problems were too big to fix and you just hoped they would take care of themselves. I felt uncomfortable for having brought it up so I changed the subject. “Batman doesn’t have horns, he has ears.”

  “What?”

  “Batman has ears, not horns. You said I had to know how to draw horns.”

  “Man, you’re a geek sometimes. C’mon, this is clean enough. Grab the 9mm and let’s go.”

  Tooth put the case with the.44 in it back behind the dresser, slid the dresser back in place, then went into the kitchen and grabbed some beers. We walked out of the stifling house into equally stifling afternoon dust. A cloud of gnats trying to fly through the screen door turned their attention to our eyes and mouths and Tooth swatted them with his cap. Mr. Elliot was back sitting in his place on the porch. As we walked by, I kept my head down, pretending to be wrapped up in my sneakers so he wouldn’t talk to me.

  “Got to have a purpose in life,” he said as I opened the car door. I was still pretending to be interested in my feet when Tooth started the car and we sped away.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Camaro rumbled down the road like a metallic fart with a purpose. Heat wave rose off the baking blacktop as I searched for a radio station worth listening to. In the part of the county we were in, I knew we wouldn’t get much but country music-which explained all the goth kids and wannabe punks who infested the shops along main street, just begging for an alternative. Only way we’d get any good radio would be to head north toward Canada or a few hours south toward Boston.

  I kept flipping stations, hoping something would come up I could hum along to, but the best I could find was some song about a man whose woman left him and took the dog when she did. I looked at the CD player and sighed. If it weren’t for online CD distributors I’d have gone Charlie Manson a long time ago. But we couldn’t use CDs in the Camaro because Tooth had fucked up the player trying to fix it.

  I finally just turned it off and stuck my hand out the window instead, let it catch the wind and swim up and down like a dolphin. We took a lesser-traveled back route that ran under the trees and offered sporadic shade. Crooked limbs criss-crossed overhead like giant arthritic fingers. The blazing sun stabbed through them here and there creating a kind of flicker effect as we drove.

  “Where to?” Tooth asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s go up toward Bobcat and see what we find. Should be pretty secluded and we can shoot all we want.”

  He reached into his pocket and brought out the bag of weed and tossed it in my lap.

  “I bought you a coming home present. Roll a nice fatty for us.”

  Shaking the bag in front of my eyes, I thought, fuck yeah, this is the shit that makes coming home worth it. I opened the bag and took a whiff and holy shit was it bad. “This stinks like a hobo’s asshole. Is it even good?”

  “Probably not, but it’s weed, ain’t it? Who cares what it smells like long as it gets us fucked up, right?”

  I took a Bud out and crunched it up in my lap. The wind whipped some of it up and stuck it to my Silver Surfer T-shirt. The papers were in the bag as well and I took one out and rolled it as best I could despite the wind. It looked rather pathetic when I finished, but I agreed with Tooth’s philosophy.

  “How’s that?” I asked, holding it up like a prize catfish.

  “Looks like a piece of bird shit, but it’ll do.”

  Bobcat Mountain was farther north than we liked to travel, about an hour and fifteen minutes, but it was as desolate as volunteer day at the old folks home. A few years ago there was an attempt to turn it into a ski resort, but a bunch of tree-hugging hippies rallied against it, arguing it would drive the mountain’s animals out of their natural habitat and into people’s bedrooms. I hate hippies.

  I lit the joint and sucked in the rancid-smelling weed, then passed it to Tooth, who took a big toke. I hadn’t smoked pot in over a month because I was afraid it would affect my finals. I got okay grades, but they weren’t going to get me into Harvard Law or anything. The drug wasted no time climbing into the recesses of my mind and convincing my brain cells they could run the place with minimal staff. I slumped back in the seat and watched my dolphin-hand dive for food. When I got bored with that I took the dice out of my pocket and we played an imaginative game of craps.

  “What odds you give me I roll a seven?” I asked, shaking the dice in my hand.

  “I bet you an ass-kicking.”

  “For you or for me?”

  “For your mother, who do you think? Just roll ’em so I can get started. I been waiting to give you a good ass kicking for a while now.”

  I rolled them on the floor and they came up seven. Scooping them up, I showed Tooth. He blew smoke in my face and punched me in the arm like a prize pugilist and I almost went through the door.

  “Ow! Youfuckingbitchthathurt!”

  He erupted in laughter and flicked the spent roach out the window. I rubbed my arm and felt it bubble up. My fist already balled, I went to hit him back, but he caught me with another blow in the other bicep. My arms went flaccid and hung down like a basset hound’s ears.

  “Sonofabitch!” I yelled.

  Tooth was high and just kept laughing. I was pissed at him, but pot giggles are a pox that spreads fast, and soon we were both cackling like a couple of idiots.

  “That weed tastes like shit,” he said.

  “I told you.”

  “I think I know a good spot around the backside of the mountain. It has some trails that were supposed to be ski paths. They go up into a nice clearing on the side; you can see out over the whole forest.”

  “We should have packed a lunch.” I was suddenly aware that our inevitable hunger would have to wait a considerable amount of time to be satiated. The nearest town from Bobcat Mountain was Bobtail, so named because it was at the back end of the mountain, and it was a good half hour away.

  I put the dice back in my pocket. We drove in silence for a bit until we arrived, then sat a bit longer until we convinced ourselves to make the hike. Tooth took the 9mm out of the case, tucked it in his waistband and pulled his shirt over it.

  “What are you doing that for?”

  “Park police patrol here sometimes. They see some strange case they might get nosy and ask me to open it up. This way, I just tell ’em I got a gargantuan cock.”

  Unlike most mountains in New Hampshire, this one didn’t have a little man in a booth asking for parking money, so we just drove up a dirt road that dead-ended about two hundred feet up, and parked off to the side. We took the six pack Tooth had grabbed from his house and started trudging up the nearest trail like two dwarves high on ore fumes. Tooth even whistled, the gap in his bridge making him sound like a hot teakettle. It wasn’t long before mosquitoes and gnats considered us fine dining. At one point, in the shadows of the trees, the bugs got so bad that I put my head in my shirt and jogged a bit. Through the fabric I could smell pine sap bubbling out of the surrounding tree trunks. The firecracker snapping of twigs behind me told me Tooth had followed my lead.

  We came out into a clearing about a third of the way up the mountain. The sun was out in full force and I could feel it working its claws into my face. Tooth was smart to wear a hat; unfortunately, my head was small and I looked kind of ridiculous in them. Looking out you could see for a distance, though there wasn’t much to see but trees, the road we’d arrived on winding through them, and summer haze.

  “Motherfucker those mosquitoes are hungr
y.” Tooth swatted at a few brave ones that followed us into the open air.

  He stared at the mountains in the distance and narrowed his eyes. “You see that?”

  “What?”

  “That. That interesting thing over there.” He pointed out at the mountains and I tried to follow his trajectory. I squinted but all I saw was trees.

  “I don’t see anything interesting,” I told him.

  “Neither do I. I have to get out of this place. And soon.”

  He was “California dreaming” again and I’d walked right into it. I’d kind of figured by now that Tooth’s summer mission was to get me to move to the west coast with him, and since I had no intention of going, it was going be a long summer. He popped the tab on one of the beers and handed it to me, took another himself and chugged it down in one gulp. When he was done he looked me in the eye and I could see he wanted to say something. I figured he was going to ask me to move again, but instead he punched me in the shoulder and yelled, “Let’s shoot something, you pantywaist!”

  Any pain that had dissipated from my arm was now back in full force. I’d have returned the punch but quickly realized the futility of it. Tooth always got this way when he drank; I was used to it. Hitting him back would only encourage him and fuel his energy.

  He walked to the tree line, put the empty beer can on a low tree limb and backed up to where I stood. “Bet you an ass-kicking I make this shot,” he said. Aiming the gun, he squared his feet and fired.

  Bang!

  The report wasn’t nearly as loud as the.44 had been, and the recoil was mild at best. The beer can flipped up in the air like a gold medal gymnast and landed on its side a little ways in the woods. He looked at me and smiled. I flinched.

  “Here.” He handed me the gun. “I’ll have to owe you that ass-kicking. I hurt my hand last time I hit you. You’re a bony little fucker.”

  I hefted the gun while he went and put the can back on the limb. When he was walking back he pretended to dodge bullets. And that was the first moment in my life I scared myself, because I felt how easy it would be to shoot someone in the head, dump the body in the woods, and walk away scot-free. The simplicity of it shook me.