American Youth

by Phil LaMarche

  He shook his head. “Will you take me home?”

  “Why?”

  “I need to go,” he said. “Take me home.”

  “Fine.” Colleen started the car and the Escort bucked as she let out the clutch too quickly.

  10

  The following day the boy walked cautiously to the group of Youth members congregated around Jason Becker’s Volkswagen in the school parking lot. He shook hands with a few and exchanged high-fives with a few others. He didn’t sense any apprehension in their gestures. He couldn’t make out any fury in their faces. It seemed impossible for them to know of his drive with Colleen, but still he worried. Espionage was at the heart of their role in the school. They listened.

  After making his way to the center of the group and jovially punching fists with Jason Becker, he felt sure his secret was safe.

  “The Wrench,” Becker said.

  “Hey, Becker,” the boy said, smiling.

  “You a good little boy in school today?”

  “Always,” he said.

  Becker nodded.

  The boy heard some hurried whispering from behind him. Becker craned his neck to look over his shoulder, then eased the boy aside and stepped past. The boy walked to the edge of the crowd to see who was drumming up the attention and he saw Kevin Dennison skulking across the lot. His pants were cuffed up to show off his black leather boots. A multitude of patches and safety-pinned scraps of material broke up the black of his backpack. Day by day Kevin seemed to grow further away from the prep-school image he’d once had. The boy had passed Kevin one day at his locker and come close enough to read the patches on his backpack. The one that stuck with him said TOO DRUNK TO FUCK.

  Before getting to his car, Kevin turned and looked at the mob of staring Youth. He squinted his eyes and bobbed a middle finger in the air between them.

  “Fuck you, faggot!” someone in the group shouted.

  “Come on over here, you pussy,” someone else yelled.

  “Hey, Dennison,” Becker shouted. Kevin didn’t look up from unlocking the door of his car. “Why don’t you smoke a dick instead of all those joints?”

  At that the group fell into laughter. One after another they reached high-fives out to Jason Becker. He smiled and clapped the hands above him in the air. Kevin got in his car and left without looking back.

  “Think he knows?” Birch said.

  “That burnout?” said Becker. “He doesn’t know his head from his ass.”

  The excitement of the group waned and they began mulling about in smaller, separate conversations. The boy made his way back over to Becker’s side.

  “What’s up?” the boy said.

  “What’s up with what, my man?”

  “With Dennison.” The boy pointed a thumb back to where Kevin had been parked.

  “I thought George had filled you in.” Becker put his arm around him and pulled him close. “You’re especially going to love this. Thing is, we found out Mr. Dennison’s been peddling a little grass at the Coffee House. And this is the sweet part: We know he keeps it on him, and that he keeps it all wrapped separately.” He threw a jab at the boy and smiled.

  The boy didn’t smile back.

  “That’s ‘intent to distribute,’” Jason said. “That’s deep shit. We’re going to keep an eye on the Coffee House. If he’s there this weekend, George is going to call it in. It’s going to be killer—we’re going to videotape it from across the street.”

  “You going to the Haneys’ shop?” the boy said.

  “In a bit.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” the boy said. “I need to talk to George.”

  George stared at the boy from behind the counter and the boy stared back.

  “This junkie tried to ruin your life and now you want to help him?” George said.

  “You can’t do it,” said the boy.

  “The fuck we can’t,” Becker said.

  “He didn’t try to ruin my life.”

  “I’d say shooting his brother in your home and trying to pin it on you is pretty close,” George said.

  “It was an accident.”

  “I don’t give a damn,” Becker said. “The kid’s a drug dealer. Period.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” the boy said.

  “The hell you will.” Becker leaned in close to the boy.

  “Easy, Jason,” George said. “Back off.”

  The boy looked at Becker. “Yeah,” he said.

  “What?” Becker said. “Who is this tough guy?”

  “Jason,” George snapped. He pointed at the door. “Take a walk.”

  Becker stared at him.

  “I can’t have a conversation with you like this.” George pointed again at the door. Jason glared at the boy but did as he was told. The door boomed behind him as he barged out.

  “There,” George said.

  “Yeah,” the boy said. “There.”

  “Ted, we’re doing this for you.”

  The boy shook his head. “I don’t want you to.”

  “I know,” George said. “But I don’t get it. This could turn the investigation in your favor.”

  “His brother died.”

  “So we should pardon every criminal with a good excuse?” George said. “Every thief who grew up poor? Every prostitute who was abused?”

  “You guys break the law,” the boy said. “Tearing up people’s stuff.”

  “They deserve it.”

  “Just because you say so,” said the boy. “Just because you make it up.”

  “I don’t make anything up,” George told him. “We’re working for a greater good, for a greater law. We can’t let sentimentality sway us, Ted. Mr. Dennison must be punished. Case closed.”

  “I don’t think I can let you do it.”

  “Then I’m afraid that we’ll have to deal with you too.”

  “Fine,” the boy said. He turned to leave.

  “Teddy.”

  The boy stopped.

  “Please think about this. We make better friends than enemies.”

  “I know,” the boy said. He paused. “I will.” He walked out the door and across the lot to the side of the bypass. Jason Becker leaned against his car, leering at the boy. He didn’t look at Jason. He walked down the side of the bypass toward home. He turned and stuck out his thumb each time a car passed. An old man in a Chevy pickup finally slowed and stopped. The boy jogged to catch up and hopped in the cab. They greeted each other but spoke little more than that.

  The boy thought about Kevin. It made sense to let the Youth have their way. Kevin’s arrest would reflect poorly upon him. Perhaps the investigators would look more favorably upon his own story after seeing what Kevin was capable of.

  The old man stopped at the corner of his street. The boy thanked him, hopped out, and walked the rest of the way home. Shortly after he arrived, the phone rang. He hesitated to pick it up, but on the fourth ring he pulled the phone from its cradle.

  “Ted,” his Uncle John said. “How are you?”

  The boy was relieved. “Fine. You?”

  “Got any plans this evening?”

  “Some homework.”

  “Got time to give me a hand with a deer? Skin and quarter it?” John said. “I’d let it hang but it’s so warm I got to get it in the fridge.”

  “Season’s open already?”

  “Opened this week,” John said.

  “You want me to ride my bike over?”

  “Nah,” John said. “Get your father’s good cutlery. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Sure,” the boy said. “See you.”

  He hung up the phone and ran upstairs to change. Then he went to the basement and rifled through a box of his father’s hunting gear. He found the two knives he was looking for, pulled them from their sheaths, and ran a finger along their blades. He grabbed a stone from the box and small bottle of oil and went to the workbench. He laid out the stone and oiled it. H
e started with the skinning knife, slowly drawing the rounded blade along the stone, alternating from one side to the other. He touched the blade again and his thumb instinctively jumped back. Satisfied, he set to the longer, more slender blade of the boning knife.

  He waited in the driveway for his uncle. Once at John’s house, they walked around back to a small shed and John lifted a two-by-four from the yoke between the doors. One side swung open. A rope from a rafter was noosed around the deer’s neck and held it upright in the shed.

  “Nice deer,” the boy said. “Six-point.”

  “Five,” the uncle told him. “Other side’s only got two.”

  “Healthy,” the boy said. He ran a hand down the soft, shiny coat. The deer was thick in the midsection and good and wide across the hindquarters. “Where’d you get him?”

  The uncle smiled and held a finger to his lips. He pointed a finger out in the direction behind the house. The Darling property extended from behind the boy’s house all the way over the hill and abutted the uncle’s land.

  “Poacher,” the boy said, smiling.

  “Nobody knows any different,” John said. He took a hacksaw from a nail on the side of the shed. “Want to get ahold of him for me?”

  The boy nodded and grabbed the deer to keep it from swinging on the rope. John took a hoof and ran the saw back and forth through the leg at the knee. The sound wasn’t pleasant, but the boy had grown accustomed to it. John threw each leg in a corner and hung the saw back on the wall. He took out his knife and ran it around the deer’s neck, just behind the ears, just deep enough to cut the hide. Then he cut the hide down the throat and chest to the opening in the carcass at the bottom of the sternum. They each took a corner of the hide and began to pull it away from the body, carefully running a blade along the fissure between muscle and skin.

  After they cut the skin away from the front legs and pulled it back behind the shoulders, they put their knives down. They each took ahold of the fur and put their weight into it. The hide pulled away from the carcass with a hiss. They skinned the hind legs and hacked off the bone that connected the tail. The deer hung naked, the muscle red and purple, the rump thick with white fat. John took the skin and hung it over the back of a sawhorse.

  The boy took hold of the deer again as the uncle set to the tenderloins on the inside of the lower back. The muscle was still warm. Without the fur, the boy could see where the arrow had punctured the rib cage just behind the shoulder. It was a textbook shot, the broadhead probably puncturing the heart or lungs. Death came fast, as the blood quickly pooled inside.

  The boy allowed his hand to slide down from the deer’s shoulder. He ran his finger around the entrance wound. It was black at the edges, where the blood had clotted. He dipped the tip of his finger into the hole and felt the dried, hardened flesh, the sharp edge of bone. He closed his eyes. In the darkness he saw Bobby, noosed and naked, and the boy’s finger dipped into the hole in Bobby’s chest. His eyes popped open and his hands jumped back from the deer. The carcass swung away from his uncle.

  “Hey,” John said, looking around the deer.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I had an itch.” He took hold of the deer again and John finished with the second tenderloin. He laid it on a small tray beside the first. He cut into the meat of the lower back, all the way to the spine on either side.

  “You want to catch?” John said.

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll cut, you catch?” John said. “You all right?”

  The boy nodded.

  “You sure?”

  He nodded again and crouched next to the animal. He got a good grip on the hindquarters and John set to the spine with the hacksaw. The boy wobbled under the weight when the saw cleared the bone and John helped him carry it inside. They separated the hindquarters and set each side in the bottom of a refrigerator in the basement. They went to the shed and returned with the two front shoulders. They cut down the torso and cut out the chops, the neck, and the belly meat. They stacked the cuts in the refrigerator.

  “That’s all?” the boy said.

  John nodded. “I want to age it some,” he said. “I’ll get to it this weekend.”

  He took the knives and the cutting board they had used to a large sink in the corner to begin the cleanup. The boy looked at the rib cage on the table. With the chops cut away, the spine ran like a tall, narrow mohawk down the center. He walked over and looked again at the entry wound. With the flesh cut away, it looked small and hardly seemed capable of bringing the animal down. The boy ran a finger back and forth over the opening. The heat had dissipated and it was cool to the touch.

  “What the heck is wrong with you tonight?”

  The boy flinched and saw that John was watching him from across the room. “Nothing,” he told his uncle.

  “Come on,” John said. “You’re stumbling around here like a zombie. What’s up?”

  The boy shrugged. “I got to decide something.”

  “What about?”

  “Remember Kevin Dennison?” the boy said.

  “Kind of a tough one to forget.”

  “He’s selling pot. And some guys I know want to rat him out.”

  “What’s the choice you got?”

  “I could tell him or not,” the boy said. “What they’re going to do.”

  “Why would you?”

  “It doesn’t seem right,” the boy said. “To get him in more trouble.”

  “More?” John said.

  “You know, more than we’re already in.”

  “I’m going to ask you something and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”

  The boy looked at his uncle.

  “You shoot that kid? That brother of his?”

  “No,” the boy said. “Hell no. Why?”

  The uncle shrugged. “Something about it doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “I didn’t shoot him,” the boy said. “I swear.”

  “All right,” John told him. “Take it easy—I believe you.”

  The boy looked at the floor. “I loaded the gun,” he said. He looked up at his uncle.

  John nodded. “Why aren’t you telling the truth?”

  “Ma says we could get sued and lose everything,” he said. “You can’t tell her I told you. You can’t.”

  “I won’t say anything,” John told him. “But I will tell you something about your mother.”

  “What?”

  “Our father,” he said. “When we were kids, a terrible drunk. Sober, he was straight as the Pope, but get a couple drinks in him and he was a twisted son of a bitch. Mean, I’m telling you, a real ball-breaker. And your mother,” John said. “She was the type who could wake up the morning after one of his nights and go to school with a smile on her face like nothing happened. Hell, she’d have a story explaining the bruise on the side of my head before we got to the breakfast table. Me, I tried, believe me.” He looked at the boy and the boy nodded. “I don’t know what type you are,” John said. “But I’ll tell you, it ain’t about the law. It’s about how something sits with you. Your guts won’t always say when you’re doing right, but they know sure as shit when you’re doing wrong. I believe that, Ted. That’s why I ain’t going to tell you what to do. I know you know.”

  The boy nodded. “You won’t tell?” he said.

  John shook his head.

  “Thanks,” the boy said.

  “Long as you don’t repeat what I told you.”

  “I won’t,” the boy said. He smiled and John smiled back.

  “Come on,” John said. “Let’s get you home.”

  The following day the boy walked cautiously through school. He knew the Youth were keeping a close eye on him. He saw them about, eyeing him, waiting for him to make his move, waiting for some indication of treachery. But they kept their distance and he kept his. He realized he was running out of time. It was Friday and he knew the Youth would try to make their move over the weekend.

  He saw Kevin twice in school and both times his h
eart started to race and his breathing quickened. He was afraid of the Youth but he was also terribly afraid of Kevin—he had been since the day he lied. It was because of that lie that the boy knew he couldn’t let the Youth turn Kevin in. But it was also that lie that made approaching Kevin impossible. What could he possibly say to him? And if he called, what would he do if Mrs. Dennison picked up the phone?

  In English class, he stared at the blank page in his notebook. Mr. O’Shea gave them the last five or ten minutes of class to free-write in their journals. The boy thought about reflecting on “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” as O’Shea had suggested, but he didn’t get the poem in the least. He listened to the scratch of pens against paper as the students around him scribbled away. He took up his pen and started in the top left corner of the page:

  Kevin,

  They know you are selling drugs. They know you do it at the Coffee House. They are going to call the cops. They are going to videotape it from across the street. You know who they are. Please don’t get caught.

  A Friend

  O’Shea gave him a dirty look when he tore the page out of his notebook. They were supposed to keep their journal writings together over the course of the quarter. The boy shrugged, folded the paper, and tucked it into his pocket. Neither O’Shea nor grades was high on his list of priorities.

  After the bell rang, the boy made his way into the surge of students in the hall. He moved with the tide of bodies and kept an eye out for Youth members. He went to a water fountain and ducked his head for a drink. He stood and looked either way. His next class was in the science wing, but he took a quick turn toward the gym. He knew he was taking a chance even being seen near Kevin’s locker; he was sure the Youth knew where it was. Before he got there he pulled the note out of his pocket, and as he passed, he slipped it through the vent at the top of the metal door. He walked to the end of the hallway and turned around, heading back in the direction of his next class.

  When he turned the corner toward the science wing, he saw Colleen standing down the hall, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. He wanted to take another turn, a quick detour around her, but he saw that she saw him.

  “Hey,” he said when he arrived before her.