Miles

by Carriere, Adam Henry

  "Or won't," I added.

  "Maybe in a different time and place," George said idly.

  *

  I spent the rest of the afternoon driving aimlessly through the smartly landscaped and mostly affluent streets of my old suburb. I passed our old house, and saw the new owners getting out of their car. They were black. I turned down four good offers before a non-white put one in. Uncle Alex thought my parting shot to the subdivision of ex-city dwellers was needlessly vindictive, and loved every bit of it.

  It began to rain. I thought the canvas top was going to snap off its hinges as I tried to raise it back up before I was soaked through. I continued my cruise down bad memory lane before I spotted Ozzie running home through one of our old parks. He wore a short pair of cut-offs, a black, sleeveless t-shirt, and had a towel rolled up in one of his hands. Probably coming back from the pool, I thought.

  "Hey, Kneecaps!" Ozzie skidded to a halt with a smile. "Get in." He stared at me and my Bug for an incredulous second before coming in from the cloudburst.

  "I knew you'd start spending that money of yours before college, son of a bitch!" He playfully shoved me sideways with his elbow. Oz glanced down at his wet clothes. "Are you sure you want my wet body in your car?"

  There was a time when I might have thought, no, I want your wet body someplace else. "Don't worry about it."

  "Want to go to the show?" A movie or two sounded good to me. I gave him a thumbs-up and headed for the revival house. "Can we stop by my place to change my clothes?"

  We looked at each other and smiled. "Only if I can watch."

  "Hey, I'll let you watch me jack off if I can borrow your car Friday night!"

  "Not just for watching, Kneecaps."

  *

  I waited inside of the large screened porch that took up most of Ozzie's backyard, enjoying the sound and smell of the falling rain as he got dressed.

  Oz emerged with two cans of Mexican beer in his hands. He tossed me one and sat down next to me on the wooden bench that faced the remainder of the yard. He was wearing an old red White Sox jersey.

  "I'm sorry I wasn't around on your birthday. We had to go to a barbecue at my Dad's house." Ozzie's Venezuelan parents had been divorced for years. He and his three little brothers lived in our old ritzy-titsy suburb with their mom, who spent most of her day at the health and country club, before throwing in a few token hours at home with the boys. They ordered out, most of the time. The dad lived somewhere in the flatlands beyond Joliet, selling cars to pay for his ex's lifestyle. "Is it too late to get you a present?"

  "That's okay. You've kept me company all summer. That's present enough. Besides, I made out pretty good this year."

  "I'll say!" He took a long swig of the cheap beer. "You're so lucky."

  My lips tightened. "That depends on how you look at it."

  Ozzie put a hand on my arm. "You know what I mean." I nodded and finished my can. "I've always been kind of jealous of you. It seems like you've got so much more than I do, but I forget how you got a lot of it. Damn, I'm sorry."

  "At least no one will throw cabbages and tomatoes at you and your date when you go to the prom." He put his hand on my arm again as we laughed quietly, hearing lightning in the distance.

  "It must be hard on you, sometimes."

  Did you say 'hard on', Kneecaps? "The loneliness is, I guess, but I'm not sure my being queer has anything to do with it."

  Ozzie shook his head. "Don't call yourself that. If you didn't listen to that Russian music so much, you wouldn't feel so lonely all the time."

  I sat back on the bench and finished the can of beer. "Have any of you gone to see Brennan?"

  "Huh. Most of them haven't talked to him since he...well, you know."

  "No, in the hospital, I mean."

  Ozzie looked at me. His eyes were wide and frightened. I could barely hear his voice. "Brennan is in the hospital?" I nodded, watching him carefully. There was something I felt in Ozzie's measured, almost stiff reaction. "What happened?"

  "I saw him earlier today. He was beaten within an inch of his life. His throwing arm was broken, too. I don't think one person did it, myself."

  Ozzie looked away from me as he stood up, walking to the edge of the screened porch. He put one of his hands flat against the wire mesh, which was damp from the rain that gently hissed down around us. His head sunk to his shoulders. "I thought they were kidding." He began shaking his head in denial. "Brennan..."

  "Who?" My voice became level and cold, as cold as I felt my soul wax.

  "I had no idea," Ozzie said, turning back to look at me. His brown curly hair and boyish looks were draped in regret. "My God..."

  "Who was it, Oz?" He caught the hard and already vengeful glaze that had come over my dark eyes.

  "Eric and Mickey..."

  Eric Brazier was an effete toad from a stuck-up family of doctors just about all of us hated. Whatever was hip, he liked, and whoever wasn't popular, he didn't. He acted like a leader, but only after he knew what everyone else had in mind, so he could propose or promote an idea that he didn't have the imagination to come up with in the first place. There was always some rumor going around, about his father buying a grade for him here, or he buying one directly from a smarter student there. I didn't doubt any of it. His one redeeming quality was that he could move his wiry, sunlamp-tanned body like a pretzel, and was a great second baseman as a result.

  Mickey Sreckov was a different story. His parents were second-generation white trash that maneuvered their way into what they fancied was ‘class’ through slum-lording and real estate graft. Like our suburb, a haven for whites of varying means who just didn't want to live with the blacks that had encroached into their old city neighborhoods, was classy, as if property tax had anything to do with class. Mickey was a soft-talking, hard-thinking mixer, handsome and well-built, but arrogant about it. He was the best center fielder I've ever played with, but a fink, all the same.

  "...they were the ones who always talked about it...showing Brennan 'how to be a man', they kept saying. The rest of us blew them off."

  "You didn't do anything else?"

  Ozzie's voice was almost hysterical. "We...I didn't take them seriously!" He sat down heavily next to me. "None of us understood or liked what Brennan told us. Here was our friend for, what, how many years? Then, one day, he's somebody else." I looked at Ozzie remotely. "You're right. He is somebody else." I stood up and dropped the empty beer can into Ozzie's lap. "He's a hospital patient now."

  *

  I called on Brennan every evening until visiting hours were over. George spent the morning with him, and Doris covered the afternoon. As bad as he looked when I first saw him, Brennan's first-rate overall health and fitness, not to mention glowing spirit, helped him recover quickly.

  I got pretty silly about the whole thing, bringing him a different gift each time I came to that damned hospital, which embarrassed him to no end and was part of the reason why I kept doing it. I especially liked bringing in forbidden food, like chocolates or pizza or bagels, because I'd always eat more than my half and knew perfectly well the nurse would be able to smell the goodies in the room after I left.

  Our conversations always remained light and cheery. We talked about the end of another remarkably undistinguished White Sox season, what we didn't do together over the summer, going back to school, nonsense like that. Brennan was anxious to see the apartment in Hyde Park, to throw in trying to get the place bribe-free inspection-proof, and couldn't wait to go for a spin in the Bug.

  We spent one night going through the box of postcards Zane had brought me back from Scandinavia. An entire box! They ranged from glaciers in Norway and forests in Sweden to shots of naked skiers, dirty goings-on in Finnish saunas, and mysterious, spy story kind of frames of Helsinki, Oslo, and Stockholm. We excitedly agreed to try and follow Zane's footsteps the following summer, and to ask Zane to accompany us if we did.

  On another night, Brennan made me read him some of the poetry I had
written in bad Italian. I read it badly, and Brennan understood it badly. Just the same, we almost cried together, afterwards. That went badly, too.

  *

  August wound on slowly. I was glad Zane was back in town, since we talked on the phone every night, and school was finally about to resume.

  One night, in the middle of trying to write a poem about Brennan, I decided to call up Ozzie. It was a short and unfeeling conversation.

  "I don't know if they'll tell me anything. They're afraid, you know."

  Good, I thought. "Just find out for me, Kneecaps. Do yourself a favor and consider it my birthday present."

  I hung up and went back to my poem.

  *

  It was the night before Brennan was to be released that we talked about something more serious.

  "Why did you tell everyone about yourself?"

  Brennan shrugged, as if the whole affair was nothing. "It's who I am. It's who we are."

  "I know that. But does it matter if the world knows?"

  "It's not the world I told, just our friends."

  I tried not to laugh. "Oh, yeah, friends. Sure."

  "They're people we've played ball with, gotten drunk with, hell, we even went skinny-dipping with them those couple of times! Friends we've spent the night with, at their place and ours."

  My God, he even sounded like he believed what he was saying! "Right, such good friends they attacked you like animals, because they didn't like the way you fuck." Brennan was hurt. I leaned over and kissed his forehead. I think a passing nurse saw me. I wondered if she would get a few orderlies to beat me up. Let ‘em try, I thought. I had Dad’s old Beretta stuffed inside my belt, just over my crack.

  I tried to change the subject. "By the way, Zane asked about you."

  "Really?" I nodded. "That's cool. He's a pretty nice guy, you know?"

  "If his father didn't control so much of his life, he'd be even nicer."

  "Do you think he's cute?"

  I was surprised by Brennan's question. I'm sure the surprise showed. "I never thought about it. Now that you ask, well, yeah, I guess so. What about you?"

  "It's hard to forget all the noises he made doing it with that girl at your old house. Talk about a party. What a turn-on!" Hm! "Do you think he's...you know?"

  "Queer?" Brennan winced. He hated the word. "No. His father wouldn't let him be, even if he was."

  Brennan gestured for me to sit next to him on his hospital bed. "I don’t hurt so much anymore.”

  “It’s the bagels and matzo ball soup. Zora says they’re both medicinal.”

  “But physical hurt heals, eventually. That's not the worst way you can hurt someone. What if you crush their spirit? What do you think takes longer to heal, an elbow or a person's heart? Emotional and psychological hurt are just as bad as someone kicking you in the head."

  He rubbed his cheek and shuddered. Brennan's smile was feeble. I sighed. I knew he was talking about Felix.

  Brennan took my hand and held it between his. "What happened...happened. It hurt a lot, sure. I wouldn't want it to happen again, but, as hurt goes..." He shook his head. "...it hurt a whole lot more not being friends with you."

  He felt the flash in my hand and squeezed it. "We never stopped being friends, we just stopped talking.” Ok, maybe not. “We're friends now, Brennan."

  "I want to be friends for longer than 'now'."

  "I don't think anybody will let us get married."

  He dismissed my witticism and stared hard at me. "Will you promise me something?"

  My eyes wavered. "I'm not good at keeping promises. You know."

  "Make me one anyway." I nodded with hesitation. I think I knew what was coming. "I think strength is all about gentleness, in being able to cry or to forgive someone, forgiving your own self especially."

  "And I don't?"

  "No. You see strength like it's some kind of war you'd rather die fighting in than lose. To you, strength is any kind of scrap you can lay your hands on and win. Maybe that's why we love each other so much." He made himself blush. "At least, that's why I love you so much. You're what I'm not, and what I can't be. The same is true for you."

  "What do you want me to promise, Brennan, to love you?"

  "No. You've done...you do that." We looked into each other's eyes as if the rest our lives might be there. The rest of the world didn’t matter. Time didn’t matter. All seventeen years each had wound down to that place that night, that room and that bed. "I don't want you to be a peacenik. It’s not you. But if anyone offers you peace, then I want you to promise me, please, that you'll accept it. Okay? Do you promise?"

  Take peace instead of making it, huh? I wasn't sure why peace between me and Felix was so important to Brennan, not having read The McGuffin Letter and all. But I made the promise anyway. Maybe it would give Brennan some kind of moral victory to help him heal faster. "OK, OK, I promise."

  It was an easy promise to make. Felix has indefatigably sent me a birthday card that had arrived a few days before. He invited the two of us to visit him and his family down in New Mexico. I’d decided to make the trip Brennan's Christmas present.

  *

  Brennan didn't make me promise to forgive anyone else, however.

  Evidently, a number of local school board members received reports about grades being adjusted and test keys being sold and distributed. Much pressure was brought to bear on the teachers alleged to be involved. A bitter internal inquiry followed, and a senior, little Eric Brazier, it so happens, was implicated, and expelled. Daddy Doctor Brazier even lost the school's insurance account! Why, the mess was so bad, it scotched Eric's chances of getting into his dream school, the University of Illinois!

  As if that weren't enough to keep the old burg buzzing, a big downtown modernization project being advanced by a local real estate investor just up and collapsed. The plan was scrapped and the properties rezoned, as were a number of other holdings owned by this same investor. The foreclosures by a suddenly unfriendly local bank and the bankruptcy filing put a bit of a crimp in the Sreckov's rickety family finances, not to mention putting quite the torpedo in Mickey's college tuition fund, too. The last I heard, the Sreckov's even had to sell their house and "trade down" a few suburbs. Pity, that.

  I never thought I'd reopen the guest register from Mom and Dad's wake, but I'm glad I did. They had many excellent friends that weren’t blood relatives, and it was good to talk to them again.

  * * *

  X X I I I

  The quality of mercy is not strained;

  It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

  Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;

  It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

  The Merchant of Venice

  The Land of Enchantment was exactly that.

  On the day after Christmas, at around four o'clock in the afternoon, we crossed into what Brennan referred to as sovereign New Mexico territory. You couldn't buy a cloud in the deepest blue sky either of us had ever seen. The sun, which was beginning to set as we arrived, painted a small collection of brilliant pictures athwart the vast and spectacular horizon. The air was crisp and clean, even when we stood beside the Welcome to New Mexico sign on exhaust-filled Interstate 40, where we took pictures of each other.

  I looked up and down the highway before stepping closer to Brennan, who smiled and wrapped his arms around me as I placed my lips on his for the fourth time since we left Chicago late Christmas night. We decided to commemorate each new state by doing the perfect hug thing every time we crossed a border, or ‘frontier’, as Brennan called them. That meant no hugs or kisses until we reached our next destination, which, to be frank, was difficult.

  Originally, we were going to do a lot more than hug and kiss at the "Welcome to..." state signs, but neither of us wanted to be arrested by a Deliveranceville sheriff or get run over; and the Bug, wonderfully eccentric car though it was, simply wasn't much good for misbehavin’.

  Besides, I had told Brennan,
if we were going to nakedly consummate our togetherness upon each frontier crossing, the first place we'd head to was New England, not the Southwest.

  *

  Even though we talked endlessly, sang along to Brennan's glam rock and hair band cassettes, and simply enjoyed a few of mine - nothing like a couple of crashing overtures to keep you going through the night - it had been a long, exhausting overnight drive, and we were content to spend the night in Tucumcari, the first town we'd hit after crossing into New Mexico.

  There didn't seem to be much a town, per se, beyond the four or five mile strip of motels, gas stations, fast-food outlets, and antique stores that were once part of the fabled Route 66. It was the town that time forgot, in a state, we would soon discover, that was filled to the brim with such towns.

  I pulled into the last motel before the strip (and town) ended, a friendly enough looking place that had its own restaurant and bar. If you liked earth tones, died, and went to heaven, your resting place would look a lot like our hotel room did. The grizzled old man in the black cowboy hat and handlebar mustache grumbled an apology that all his rooms with double beds were being redone. After some shameless hemming and hawing, we took a room with a king-size bed big enough for an orgy.

  We soaked the long drive out of our bodies in a bubble bath. I had packed a bottle of Mr. Bubble without Uncle Alex or Zora noticing. I fell asleep in Brennan's arms twice.

  *

  The bar menu featured an item called Bucket of Beer. Was this a literal description, Brennan wondered? A sweet old waitress named Sandy managed to forget asking us for any i.d. before serving us both a wine bucket filled with six bottles of Pacifico, a fine Mexican beer. Maybe we looked like good tippers (as opposed to under-age punks acting smart by ordering beer in the first place). The huge, stomach-busting delight of our dinner, which took over two hours to consume, consisted of a taco salad, bar-b-que filet quesadillas, chili rellenos, fried taco rolls, and the freshest, sweetest tortilla chips we had ever tasted. Then we sat and finished our beer buckets for the next hour.