New Jersey Noir

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Weren’t you guys friends for a while?”

  “Supposedly, for about a week, until I became a loser.”

  “Like me.” Pervert pinched the tobacco out of the cigarette and started tearing open roaches onto the back of Kevin’s homework. “Go down Kettle Run. There’s a place used to be a Girl Scout camp.”

  “We got time?”

  “You got study hall first period and I got gym, and I’m excused.” Pervert refilled the empty paper tube with shake and pushed in the lighter knob. They saw the decaying wooden sign for the Girl Scout camp and Ernie pulled the Buick behind an old bunkhouse by the river.

  “Roll down your window so our clothes don’t smell.”

  “Your clothes always smell, Ernie.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, like Fidel Castro’s crotch.”

  They blazed, Pervert alternating hits with the inhaler. The sun and the weed made the maple burn redder. Pervert climbed out of the Buick. “We still got some time, right?”

  “Took us twenty minutes to come out here and now it’s quarter to ten.”

  “Don’t turn this into fuckin’ algebra homework, Ernie, just tell me whether I’ve got time to take a shit.”

  “What! Where?”

  “Over there in those trees.”

  “How you going to wipe?”

  “Whatever ain’t poison ivy.”

  “You sure you know the difference?”

  Pervert went singing around the back of the bunkhouse. “Leaves of three, let’m beeeee …”

  At the time Ernie didn’t think twice about it, but Pervert took so long they would end up late for second period. “Jesus, Pervert, took you for fuckin’ ever.”

  “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  “What’d you use to wipe?”

  “Kevin Klausen’s algebra.”

  “What!” Ernie punched his arm. “You asshole!”

  Pervert wrapped his arms around his head and curled up squirming in the passenger seat. “Peace! Peace! Peace!”

  A day later they’re back at Girl Scout camp and Ernie watches Pervert. He wants to look Pervert in the eye, but Tull is holding him tight by his jacket collar shaking him and shouting in his face, “Little shit! Where’s the rest?”

  Pervert is shivering, crying. “There ain’t no rest.” A wet spot spreads down the leg of his jeans and Ernie looks away.

  Keith gives Ernie a drowsy look. “You follow us out here yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “You sayin’ your friend did it alone?” No. That isn’t it, either. But Ernie isn’t in a position to contradict. Keith speaks up to the sky. “The way I see it, one of ’em or both of ’em is lyin’. And they ain’t been sellin’ it yet cuz the shit ain’t cured. So somewhere there’s about six pounds of pot we can still get back into the rightful hands.” Tull, with his gaze fixed on piss-pants Pervert, is intent on Keith as if listening to his own inner voice. “Why don’t you have a talk with that one and I have a talk with this one and the first one to tell us the truth gets to see his mommy again? I’m sure when these kids see what a bad choice they made, we’ll get back whatever they haven’t already smoked. And then they can tell us about how they found it.”

  They break off like pairs of dance partners, Pervert with Tull and Ernie with Keith. Keith pulls Ernie by the wrist and leads him around the back of the bunkhouse, another twenty steps to a thick hedgerow that seems impenetrable, but Keith pushes aside a heap of vines and they duck into a small clearing in the trees.

  Here they are, the gigantic cannabis plants, about twenty of them, all taller than Ernie and bearing big, beautiful buds with dark-purple hairs, getting irrigated from the river through siphons. Ernie can see three stunted plants. The stalks have been cut cleanly with a pocket knife near the top. Nobody could expect this to go unnoticed, but it seems to have been done deliberately, with care: not brute vandalism, more like a tithe.

  Keith sits Ernie gently on a stump and stands over him with one foot up like a cop confiscating firecrackers. “It’s not a ton of money, when you consider all the work and worry, and I don’t feel like harvesting today. Forecast puts first frost two weeks away. Let those plants bud another ten days and it doubles the take.” He’s not trying to be intimidating; Keith is just thinking out loud when he says, “It might end up better to keep you missing awhile.”

  Ernie’s voice trembles. “I swear I won’t tell anyone. I’ll forget we ever came out here. Could I please have my keys?”

  Keith answers very slowly. “We. Both. Know. That. Can’t. Happen.”

  Ernie looks up at the abandoned Girl Scout bunkhouse as if something from this vestige of happier days might come to his aid, but the windows are long gone from the empty boxes and the bunkhouse looks down on the scene with hollow eyes. Suddenly he hears Pervert scream, “Wait! No!”

  An explosion startles them both. For a second Ernie and Keith stand frozen looking at each other before Keith pushes through the vines and runs around the bunkhouse. Ernie follows.

  When he comes around the front of the bunkhouse, Ernie sees Tull with his .44 standing over Pervert who’s facedown on the ground, motionless, blood spreading a stain beneath his body, soaking the earth.

  Keith speaks evenly: “Tull, you dumb fuck. You greasy, dumbass fuck.”

  “The little shit shouldn’t’ve tried to run!”

  “Goddamnit, give me that fuckin’ gun.” Keith takes the weapon and goes to the truck. He comes back and hands Tull a shovel. “Dig.”

  “Fuck that! Make this little shit do it.”

  Keith doesn’t have to repeat himself. The look he gives Tull is enough to say they will have to discuss it later. Tull shakes his head, starts digging. “Shit’s fucked up.”

  Ernie can’t believe what he sees. A minute ago Pervert screamed and now Tull is digging a hole. He imagines Pervert’s mom in town right now with her hair piled up in a beehive, thinking about Pervert by his real name, Morgan, washing his socks, washing his underwear, skidmarked Pervert underwear getting bleached for another day that will never happen. He imagines Pervert just yesterday knocked on his ass in the woods behind Tull’s trailer, that look of surprise on his face, squirming in the sticks and leaves, shouting, Fuckin’ awesome!

  When they arrived late for second period yesterday, Ernie got bumped from behind at his locker—Kevin Klausen.

  “Where’s my homework?”

  “I cannot tell a lie. Pervert used it to wipe his ass.”

  “He WHAT?”

  “Tell Mr. Trees you lost it. I can redo it for him tonight.”

  “How did it get into Pervert’s hands for him to wipe his ass with?”

  “I give him a ride to school some days.”

  “You fags butt-fuck in the backseat that early in the morning? Next time you keep it in a binder or something. I don’t need that punk knowing where my grades come from.”

  Ernie took the Visine, gave himself two drops in each eye, and he was ready for gym. He suited up even though it was asking for punishment. Mr. Connelly called roll military style. “Álvarez, Ernesto.”

  “Here.” The cool boys followed this with sneezes of Spic and coughs of Faggot.

  It was the day for dodgeball, a euphemism for Smear the Queer because that was how it worked out after teams got picked, the big jocks having a blast making the losers and faggots hit the deck and taking bets on who could raise a redder welt.

  Back at his locker, Ernie heard softly in his ear: “Hey, boat boy, I hear you do homework.” A girl. Wait wait wait wait wait wait: Carleen Delmonte—Kevin’s girl. She looked so good in those jeans, the ones with the little question mark on the pocket, it made Ernie’s heart ache.

  “Who said that?”

  “Mr. Moore.”

  “The science teacher? He knows?”

  “He told me, Connie—he thinks my name is Connie—if you need help with homework, ask the Spanish kid.”

  “Science, huh?”

  “I’m not asking y
ou to do it for me. I just need a little tutoring. You could come over.”

  I can come over, Ernie said to himself. Boat boy is coming over to Carleen Delmonte’s house.

  Ernie’s father sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. His nose, marbled with wasted capillaries, poked out between tobacco-yellowed fingers. It was the afternoon hour when sense returned for just long enough to give him the idea to jettison it again, because all sense brought with it was recollections of other afternoons before exile made Ernie’s mother crazy.

  “Hey, Pops.” His father parted his hands and waved his fingers. “Can I take the car tonight?”

  “What you doing?”

  “Studying for school tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow Saturday.”

  “Tomorrow’s Friday.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  What was left for them? All his father wanted was to be left at home alone. Ernie was too old for hide-and-seek, and it had never been about playing fair, never his father’s turn to seek. What was hidden were bottles, all sizes and colors, in toilet tank, shoe box, guitar case—these were the easy hiding places—inside breaker box, under toolbox tray, above ceiling panels, beneath linoleum tiles. His father would literally tear the house apart to hide them. Ernie used to feel triumph at finding one, but he had given up for the futility of ever winning, of beating the fatigue that was beating them both. And his father began leaving the empties around, not so much as a sign of conquest but of resignation: See, this is me. So it was almost as friends again that they recognized each other across the kitchen table yesterday afternoon: Let’s be easy on each other today.

  “Pops, when’s it going to lift?”

  “Hay cosas en la vida—los estresses, ¿no?—que son demasiados soportar solo, pero uno las tiene que soportar. ¿Comprendes?”

  “Maybe you don’t have to withstand them alone.”

  “Son míos. Son yo.”

  “We could talk about it.” His father waved it away like always. It was understood that he genuinely lost his voice when the subject came up. Ernie believed him. It happened to him too. Hearts break slowly, which is why we can look tragic news in the eye at the moment of shocked certainty and say, This is happening to me. Got to face it or stab yourself in the heart, because no painkiller will ever lift without making you face it all over again. Ernie didn’t have the courage to stab himself, and yet he wasn’t sure he had the heart to face it, and nobody could tell him how long it was going to take. He couldn’t even guess.

  When he knocked on the door a large man answered, South Jersey redneck, shirtless, tattooed, a faded Confederate flag erupting from his chest. “What do you want?”

  A woman called over the TV: “That’s him, Larry, the tutor from Carleen’s school.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Delmonte.”

  “That’s not my name, honey. Call me Glynnis.” The mom was sunburned with a peroxide permanent, those same bright eyes as Carleen and still nicely built. “Come back to the couch, Larry, the ’mercial’s over.” Larry turned and walked back to the TV. Hellfire engulfed his big shoulders, flames licking the 609 on the back of his neck.

  Carleen came out wearing those question-mark jeans and a close-fitting pink sweater. Her eyes were drowsy-pretty with a pencil twirled in her hair. She led Ernie back to her room, Prince hanging over her bed with his shirt off. “You got a curfew?”

  “Nah. My dad doesn’t give a shit.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Drink, since the divorce. My uncle moved us up here thinking he’d be able to turn him around, but so far nothing’s changed except the weather. What about your dad?”

  “No fuckin’ idea.”

  “That’s not him answered the door?”

  “Who? Fuckhead? He’s not my dad, but I’ve never known my mom without a boyfriend. Your mom got a boyfriend?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so. She’s crazy down in Miami.”

  Ernie thought about her getting in trouble with the apartment manager. She would lock herself out and the man would let her in and see all these newspapers and half-empty cans piled up to the ceiling, smell bad odors coming from her room. Anyone crazy enough to go out with her was probably locked up in his own apartment somewhere. Maybe right next door.

  They didn’t talk for a minute while Carleen pulled out her books. She had sharpened three pencils to needle points and they sat there lined up beside the blue binder all her friends had signed and scribbled the initials of guys they liked on.

  “How long you been going out with Kevin?”

  “Like, never long.”

  “Really?”

  “At Cherry Hill East, you got to look like you’re going out with a jock or the cheerleaders call you dyke or slut. I picked Kevin ’cause he doesn’t try to touch me. Probably a fag.”

  “Wow.” Ernie had never thought of that.

  “I do have a boyfriend, but he’s older. Mom would kill me if she knew I was going out with a guy in his twenties, but who the fuck is she to talk with the scumbags she chooses?”

  The natural next question would have been Have you fucked him? but asking it would put Ernie in the same category as the school nurse and guidance counselors, people she might actually tell this kind of thing to who nevertheless would never get to fuck her. Instead, he decided he should appear uncurious like someone she might like. Anyway, her boyfriend was in his twenties, so of course they’d fucked.

  “Hey, boat boy, you smoke, right?”

  “Nah. Sometimes my clothes smell like my dad’s Marlboros ’cause we live in a small house.”

  “No, I mean pot.”

  “Uh …”

  She narrowed her eyes and widened the smile. “I know you do. I can see it in your eyes.”

  Ernie smirked. “I thought Visine takes the red out.”

  “Not what I mean.”

  Carleen went over to her jewelry box and took out a tampon box. “One place Fuckhead won’t look.” She pulled out a lighter and a smokeless one-hitter.

  “Cool, where’d you get that?”

  “My boyfriend got it at Spencer’s in the mall.”

  “They sell those at Spencer’s?”

  “In the back part.”

  “Shit, they won’t even let me in there.”

  She cracked the window and took a hit, blew the smoke outside, and handed him the one-hitter still hot, still wet with her spit. Ernie hit it and tasted the brass that a second ago had been between Carleen’s lips. It was really good weed. “Where do you get this shit?”

  “My boyfriend grows it.”

  “Maybe we should get started on this homework.”

  “Forget the homework, boat boy. You drive, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can you give me a ride somewhere?”

  She told her mom, “Me and Ernie are just going to Luigi’s.” She hadn’t wanted him to do her science homework. Carleen hadn’t even wanted any help with it. She just wanted someone her age to take her out of the house so that she could hook up with her older boyfriend.

  They made a left on Tomlinson Mill Road and drove north to a world he didn’t know was out there in the pines. The light was dying and the mile markers went by unnoticed under the hypnotic spell of the long straightaway. The blue glow in the sky off to the right came from the last light of the day reflecting off the Atlantic.

  She told him to pull into the last driveway on the left. “Flash your lights twice before getting out of the car. Don’t forget or they might have to shoot your ass.”

  What the fuck was he getting into? He pulled in next to a black pickup, stepped out of the Buick, and followed Carleen up to the house.

  The door opened before they got to it and Ernie saw a familiar ugly face—Tull’s. He pretended he didn’t know Ernie. Inside, the boyfriend Keith sat at a table with a bunch of baggies and a postal scale. The baggies were full of pot. Carleen sat on his lap and kissed him like Ernie never saw anyone kiss except for in the movies. Keith spoke without looki
ng at him, her jeans on his lap. “You drive?”

  “I just moved here from Miami.”

  “You want some pot?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Figures.” Keith pulled a couple of buds out of a bag and gave Ernie what was left. “I’ll take her home later. You know how to get back to town?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Don’t have to tell you not to come around here again or say anything about this. I know who you are. If I get any unauthorized visits, you know what?”

  Tull finally spoke up: “We’re the town murderers. We’ll chop you up in little bits and scatter the pieces in the Pine Barrens for the wolves to eat.”

  Keith acted like he hadn’t heard this. “You know the Betsy Ross Bridge?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s where we’ll go.”

  Ernie knew it was time to leave. It had gone all right. He had a baggie of pot. Tull followed him to the door. “Careful out there in those pines. UFOs come out of hiding when you’re high.”

  Now Keith and Tull are both looking at Ernie but not looking at Ernie, everything sideways, not looking him in the eye with everyone knowing that with one kid dead, another kid a witness, and nobody else but killers at an abandoned Girl Scout camp, something must come next.

  Three tops. How much did he say that was? Six pounds? It doesn’t make sense. Where could Pervert have put it? Not folded in Kevin Klausen’s algebra homework. They had been out here only one other time. No way Pervert came back; nobody but Ernie or Pervert’s mom would ever drive him anywhere. No way Pervert could have hauled more than an ounce or two out of here in his underwear. Two days in a row and he at best got a handful of buds. And Ernie knew Pervert: that’s all he would have tried for, would have lied for. Always wanted to get over, never liked to share, fat little klepto. But it was nothing to get shot for.

  Keith puts a hand on Ernie’s shoulder and walks him back around the bunkhouse. He has Tull’s gun. Ernie’s adrenaline is flowing, his heart and his head going a thousand miles a second. He thinks of his mother talking to herself in her apartment in Miami. He thinks of his dad drinking at the kitchen table in Cherry Hill. He thinks of Carleen in first period, of how good she looks in those jeans. If only he could communicate with one of them. I’m here, Carleen, at the old Girl Scout camp off Kettle Run. Help.