American Youth

by Phil LaMarche

  When fish were caught, their skulls were dashed. Before they froze stiff, their bellies were slit and guts pulled free. The father spoke of reluctantly removing his mittens and with cold-blunted fingers opening the blade of his pocketknife. On good days, beside each hole grew a pile of fish and beside them grew a pile of their innards.

  When the boy asked the father why they never heard from his brothers, the father told him that they weren’t much different at home than they had been on the ice. Even in closer proximity, communication was functional and sparse at best. With the passing of their folks, there was little left to draw them together.

  The boy clapped the album closed, put it away, and stood up from his desk. He opened the door and looked down the hallway. His mother was in her room, watching television. He closed the door, went to the window, and slowly eased it open. The screen proved a little difficult, but he got it off and out of the way. He rifled through his bag and came up with the cigarette and lighter. He killed the light in his room, stuffed pillows under his blankets and stepped out the window to the roof of the garage. The pitch was perfect to lie back on and look up at the sky. He thumbed the lighter, touched the flame to the cigarette, and drew in the smoke.

  He inhaled slowly and methodically on the cigarette. He tried exhaling through his nose, but it burned much too badly. He thumbed the lighter again and stared into the flame. He started counting and got past fifty. His thumb began to burn and he stopped. He lifted his left arm and looked at his biceps. He pushed the searing hot metal into the soft pale flesh inside his arm. His whole body lurched and went tight at the feeling. He closed his eyes and white light exploded on the backs of his lids. It took everything he had to keep it there. Once the burning went dull, he pulled the lighter back and slid it into the top of his sock. Without the burning he felt slow and heavy. The backs of his eyes went back to black. He let his head fall on the stone-dust shingles and he took a long slow breath.

  6

  Peckerhead Jackson approached the boy every day after school. He even sought the boy out before and after their third-period biology class. The boy tried to act uninterested, but it was difficult, since Peckerhead was the only person who tried to talk to him in the course of the school day. After a week of walking the halls alone, he started looking forward to Peckerhead’s company. On the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend, Peckerhead approached him.

  “You been thinking about us,” Peckerhead said.

  The boy shrugged.

  “I’m not going to keep following you ’round like some whipped dog,” he said.

  “I never asked you to.”

  “Can’t you see I’m trying to do you a favor?”

  “I never asked for nothing from you.”

  “Would you quit being so stubborn and come on?”

  “Yeah?” the boy said.

  “Hell, yes,” Peckerhead said. “Quit being so pigheaded.” He smiled and the boy smiled back at him. He followed Peckerhead out to the school parking lot, where a group of guys stood in a circle. Many of them had on the same outfit as Peckerhead: black suspenders, white T-shirts, pressed khakis. The group parted as Peckerhead and the boy approached. A handful of the closest boys stood staring.

  “Guys, this is Ted LeClare. He’s a freshman.”

  Most of the group smiled and a handful called out a greeting to him. The two closest to him held out a hand and he shook them. An older guy hopped off the trunk of a car and walked toward him. The crowd parted.

  “Theodore LeClare, nice to finally meet you,” he said. “I’m George Haney.”

  “Ted,” the boy said. He reached out to shake George’s hand. “Just Ted.”

  George smiled and they shook. The boy noticed that his hand was small for his age, his handshake a bit weak. George was also somewhat pear-shaped. He had narrow shoulders and wider hips. “How is school treating you?” George asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Anyone giving you trouble?”

  The boy shook his head. There was something to the way George spoke. He looked the boy in the eye and patiently waited at the end of each question. The boy felt as though his answer mattered.

  “He likes guns,” Peckerhead called out from the other side of the group. “I told him you’d show him.”

  “I didn’t say that,” the boy said.

  “You don’t have to be ashamed.” George said it slowly and shook his head. His demeanor was calming to the boy. “We’re all red-blooded Americans here. We like guns too.” He smiled.

  The boy smiled back.

  “I have to work for a couple hours at my mother’s shop,” George said. “There won’t be many customers. If you’d like to come along, we can chat and I can give you a ride home when I get off.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “You’ll be home for dinner,” George said. “Come on.” He was easy to listen to and the boy followed him through the crowd to his Ford sedan.

  The store was small, just an addition off their single-story ranch house. The sign out front read VIRA’S PANTRY. GUNS, AMMO, KNIVES, HUNTING ACCES., HOME PROTECTION. He followed George across the dirt parking lot. It was uneven and rutted out. An electric chime rang as George opened the front door. His mother sat behind the register reading a magazine. Behind her stood a vertical row of at least thirty rifles and shotguns. Above them on the wall hung what looked to be an M16, an AK-47, and two other assault rifles the boy didn’t recognize. In front of her was a long glass display case full of handguns and knives. When they got close, she looked down at her watch and shook her head. She was a big woman with short gray hair, but when she shook her head, the boy saw that it was long in the back.

  “Would it kill you to get here on time?” she said.

  “I have school, Mother,” George said.

  “Don’t give me that.”

  “You can go now,” he told her.

  “I know what I can and can’t do,” she said. “Don’t get lippy just ’cause one of your little peckerwood friends is here.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother.”

  “I told you not to give me that tone.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Just leave.”

  The boy was startled by the jump in George’s voice. He had walked down one of the aisles, toward the back of the store, to get away from the argument.

  George’s mother shook her head. The floor creaked as she walked across the room and he heard the door that led into their house open and shut.

  “I apologize for that,” George said.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “I find it very embarrassing.”

  “Don’t,” said the boy.

  “She doesn’t agree with my attempts to better myself. She says it’s bad for business, if you can believe that,” George said. “It kills her that we’re going under. I’m sure you’ve noticed our lack of inventory.”

  The boy had noted the sparsely stocked shelves, but he shrugged as if he didn’t.

  “You’re kind, but the truth is that we’ve lost our credit with most of our suppliers.”

  “My dad had to move to find work,” the boy said. He walked over to the glass case and peered in at the selection of handguns. George went behind the counter and stood across from him. The boy was fascinated by the revolvers. He loved the exposure of their firing mechanisms. The newer semiautos tucked away most of their moving parts, but with the revolvers, it was all there to be seen.

  George unlocked the case and reached inside. “Hold this one,” he said. George pushed a pistol into the boy’s hand. “That’s German design, German manufacture.”

  “It’s heavy,” the boy said.

  “That’s partly the age of the piece, the lack of materials technology that we have today, but it’s also due to the exceptional caliber of the round.” George set a large bullet on the glass counter. “That, Ted, would do considerable—” He was interrupted by the electronic chime of the front door. Another teenager stepped into the shop. The first thing the boy noticed was his shaved head. />
  “What’s up,” the other boy said, throwing a casual, salute-like greeting at George.

  “Jason,” George said. “I was just showing this young man the Luger.”

  “He’s a tease,” Jason said to the boy. “He ain’t let me shoot it yet.”

  “You can shoot it when you buy it,” George told him.

  “And just give me a minute to sell my car and whore-out my mother,” Jason said. He laughed with George. The boy smiled.

  “Jason Becker, Ted,” George said.

  Jason Becker reached out to shake his hand.

  “Good to meet you, Ted,” said Jason. “Sorry I can’t hang—my mother’s got me by the short ones. Tonight?”

  “Of course,” George told him.

  “I’ll be there,” Jason said. “See you around.”

  “Sure,” the boy said. After the door closed he asked George if Jason was a skinhead.

  “No,” said George. “He’s Youth.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “American Youth,” George said. “It’s a small group I coordinate. We get together and discuss politics, activism, that kind of thing. You should come.”

  “Maybe,” the boy said.

  “Definitely,” George told him. “Tonight—think you can?”

  “I can call my mom and ask.”

  “Good,” George said. “The phone’s back here behind the counter.”

  The boy was nervous. He sat in the center of a circular booth, surrounded on all sides by George’s cohorts. They held meetings at the local Denny’s, a twenty-four-hour chain diner. On his right sat Jason Becker, the largest and most intimidating of the bunch. If George was the leader, Jason seemed a second-in-command of sorts. He was the brawn to George’s brains. To the right of Becker sat Peckerhead, who kept opening his mouth to speak but never said much more than a few words before he was interrupted. On the boy’s left sat Dan; when George introduced him he made it clear that Dan was captain of the varsity wrestling team. Beyond Dan sat Birch, a tall, lanky guy with an enormous pompadour. George pulled a chair up to the open spot at the table and sat. Behind him a group of young cadets moved their chairs and crooked their necks to try to get closer to the action in the booth.

  “What do you think?” Jason Becker asked the boy.

  The boy shrugged.

  “You know it’s their welfare spending killing the economy, keeping your dad out of work,” Becker said.

  “My dad has a job,” the boy said.

  “Simply put, Ted, I’m an American,” George interrupted from across the table. “I believe in freedom.” He took a breath. “I personally don’t think that people in New Hampshire should have to live like people in Rhode Island or Alabama. Or them like us, for that matter. I believe in America the republic, where the power is equally dispersed among the states.” Taking a sip of coffee, George shushed someone else at the table with an open palm raised in the air. “But if you’re a Federalist—they call themselves Democrats but they have nothing to do with democracy—if you’re a Federalist, Ted, you think that the national government has the right to force the same laws over everybody, with no concern for local culture or community.”

  “Dude, it goes way back,” Peckerhead said. “Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were having the same argument.”

  “Civil War,” Becker said, holding up a finger to make a point. “All that slave stuff was secondary to the real conflict. The North wanted to force a trade tariff on all the states. The South wanted the right to make laws on a state-by-state basis.”

  “These days all they preach is diversity, but it’s just the new hegemony,” George said. “If they’re going to embrace the Hollywood whores and homosexuals, they also have to accept those of us who don’t greet them with open arms.” George’s voice rose in energy. “They can have the whole of California, for all I care. Massachusetts, Connecticut—keep them.” He paused and raised an index finger in the air above the table. “Just as long as we can keep what’s ours.” George brought a fist down on the table, rattling the plates and silverware there.

  “Hell, yeah,” Becker said. He reached up and gave George a high-five.

  “I’m not here to tell anyone else how to go about their business,” George said. “But I’ll be damned if anyone comes into my home and tries to tell me how I got to live.”

  High-fives went around the table. They smiled and punched fists. The boy found himself consumed by the energy in the booth. Goose bumps grew on his forearms and when Dan held up his hand, the boy reached up and slapped it hard. Becker threw a jab at the boy’s shoulder and slapped him hard on the back. The boy didn’t understand it entirely—George had lost him somewhere around hegemony— but whatever it was, it felt good.

  The Youth wardrobe was influenced by both the professional golf tour and the local skinheads. Loafers and argyle socks were a mainstay and their khakis were hiked up to show them off. Narrow black suspenders stood out against their white T-shirts.

  Much of the community adored the Youth. In school they acted as a sort of underground vigilante force. They ratted out drug dealers and finked on folks who boozed before the pep rallies. They went to church and took part in volunteer organizations to support their view that social welfare was the obligation of the community and not the federal government. They organized protests against anything that defied what they thought to be good, wholesome, and true. They organized protests against protests.

  After they left Denny’s, it was clear the Youth members had another destination in mind, but they made a detour and dropped the boy off at home before he could discover where they were headed.

  “Think about it, Ted,” George said.

  The boy nodded. He stood in his driveway, outside George’s car window.

  “You’re with us, man, I know you are,” George told him. “But you have to make up your mind.”

  The boy nodded again.

  “Have a good night, Ted,” George said. There were other farewells from within the car.

  “See you,” the boy said. The car backed out and they were off.

  The boy stood for a moment facing the empty road. He turned and looked at his house. His mother was home, but the only evidence of her presence was the flickering light of the television in the living room. He walked to the mouth of the driveway and looked again at the house. When he didn’t see her, he walked across the yard and took hold of the real estate sign. He wrenched it out of the ground and jogged across the street. He took the sign by the legs, spun several times, and let it fly. It wobbled in the air like an unbalanced Frisbee, clanged into a good-size pine, and crashed into the underbrush. He loped back across the street and down his driveway.

  Inside the house, he kicked off his shoes and walked into the living room. His mother sat on the couch with an afghan over her legs.

  “Where you been?” she said.

  “I told you,” he said. “Out.”

  She looked at him.

  “Denny’s, with those guys, the ones I told you about.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “They’re a group. Like an organization.”

  “They got a name?”

  “American Youth,” he said. “They’re political.”

  “Political?” she said. “What the heck’s a kid your age got to be political about?”

  “Plenty, Ma. They’re against drugs and alcohol. They’re for American values.”

  “That’s political, huh?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Just seems strange for teenage boys to get excited about something like that.”

  “That’s why it’s political, Ma.”

  “Take it easy,” she told him. “If it’s going to keep you out of drugs and liquor, go ahead and be political then.”

  “They don’t like the new people in the developments either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re trying to change everything here.”

  She nodded. “Not troublemakers or
anything?”

  He shook his head.

  “You can’t get in trouble,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I’m not kidding, Theodore. You get in trouble again and it could ruin everything. You hear me?”

  He nodded. “You heard anything?”

  She shook her head. “Dick Duncan said if I called anymore he’d file harassment charges. You?” she said. “Anything going around school?”

  “I’m sure they talk,” he said. “They don’t say it to me, though.”

  She nodded. Her eyes stayed on the television. “I left dinner on the stove.”

  He turned to walk into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” she called.

  He stopped and turned.

  “Would you quit throwing that sign?”

  He looked at her.

  “I’m not getting it this time.” She still looked at the television.

  “It doesn’t matter whether it’s there or not,” he said. “People don’t buy houses where that happened.” He pointed in the direction of the dining room.

  “Stop that,” she told him. “Stop it now.”

  “Why?” he said. “It’s the truth.”

  “Does it make you feel any better to think that the house will never sell and we’ll be away from your father for good?”

  He shook his head.

  “So why think that way?” she asked him. “The truth doesn’t matter.”

  He nodded and looked at the television. He turned and walked into the kitchen, stopping for a moment at the entrance of the dining room to look in. It was dark and he could just make out the outlines of the table and chairs, the china cabinet. His mother had thrown a decorative rug over the missing rectangle of carpet, but it was hard for him not to think about it. It was hard not to think about how different everything could be.

  7

  Following another day of school, an afternoon at the Haneys’ shop, and an evening spent at Denny’s, the boy loaded up with the Youth and headed out again. He sat with two others in the back of George’s Ford sedan. Peckerhead was in the front, next to George. Four other guys were packed into Jason Becker’s Volkswagen Rabbit—the car was covered with such a skin of stickers and graffiti that at first glance it looked like something from the circus. But a closer look at the slogans made it clear that a crowd of clowns wasn’t about to pile out: BURN MY FLAG AND I’LL BURN YOUR ASS; KILL A COMMIE FOR MOMMY; ABORTION = HOMICIDE; A FIRESTORM TO PURIFY.