American Youth

by Phil LaMarche

  The boy looked over his shoulder for Colleen, but she was gone.

  “Don’t think we’ve forgotten,” Becker said, “you degenerate fuck.” Becker reached up and put his hand on the boy’s face. He gave him a hard shove and the boy stumbled backward, knocking into several people. The girl that took the brunt of it whined, “What the fuck?”

  The boy turned and apologized.

  “Asshole,” she said.

  When the boy looked back, Becker was leaving, but there was a crowd staring at him. When he walked away he heard someone say under his breath, “What a pussy.”

  The worst part was that he knew he was to blame for all of it. He couldn’t complain. He couldn’t bitch. But he could get stoned. Now he gave a quick glance in each direction of the railroad bed and pulled the joint out of his pocket. It was in an empty pack of gum for protection and it had a slight air of mint because of that. He stopped for a moment to get it lit, and once it was burning, he continued on.

  He tried to imagine a train passing on this grade that once had held tracks. It seemed so hard to believe, a train where now there was only an overgrown path in the woods. There were elaborate stone bridges where the trail passed over creeks and culverts and there were other reminders around town of some other time. As kids they’d found stone walls in the woods that seemed absurdly obsolete—dividing only forest from forest.

  On walks during hunting season, the grandfather had pointed out the ruins of the first Darling farmhouse. The stone foundation was six or seven feet deep, with small trees growing out of the basement floor. The boy and his friends had found their way back to it, daring one another into the small, dark root cellar. There was a narrow stone well that made them think of the stories of children falling into such small, tight places.

  The grandfather had told him about his days working on the farm: hay season, jacking deer, the farmer beating him worse than his father ever could. It was the Depression and the great-grandparents sent the grandfather away. At the farm they could feed him, and the farmer occasionally brought food to his parents as payment for his labor.

  The boy thought about his grandfather’s situation and felt a flash of guilt—here he was, well fed and underworked, and still such a screwup. An ache grew in him, and he closed his eyes and crooked his neck to hit at the joint. He hardly coughed anymore, but he flinched when he looked up—Mr. Benson, in a headband and sweatsuit, jogged toward him on the path. He tried to let his arm fall casually to his side, and he flicked the joint over the edge of the trail. He turned his head to the side and let the smoke slowly out of his nose.

  “Hello, Teddy,” Mr. Benson said.

  “Hey, Mr. Benson.”

  Mr. Benson kept jogging and disappeared as quickly and as quietly as he had come. “Fuck,” the boy said under his breath. “Goddamn fuck-all.”

  He turned, and when he saw that Mr. Benson was long gone, he went back and retrieved the joint. He hit at it several more times, snuffed it out, and slid it back into the empty pack of gum.

  “The luck I got,” he said. He remembered the hot afternoons he and his father had spent fishing on Mr. Benson’s boat. He wondered if Mr. Benson had recognized the smell of pot. Then he wondered if Mr. Benson would fink on him.

  The boy arrived home to an empty house. He went first to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. Then he tipped his head back and held each eye open for a couple of drops of Visine. He wiped at the corners of his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt and left the bathroom. In the kitchen he filled a bowl with pretzels, pulled a pickle out of a jar in the fridge, grabbed one of his mother’s diet sodas, and went to the living room to watch television. After several sit-com reruns, his mother arrived. She had stayed late at school for a PTA meeting and picked up a pizza on the way home. The two greeted each other and made their way to the kitchen to eat. The house was quiet without the television on.

  “Did you talk to Mr. O’Rourke?” she said.

  “Nah,” he said, chewing on one of those little pieces of sausage that reminded him of rabbit turds.

  “Theodore,” she said.

  “What?”

  “He gave you a D on your last exam.” She whispered it, like she didn’t want anyone else in the empty house to hear about her son’s grade.

  “It’s just French,” he said. “What am I, going to France?”

  She shook her head. “Should I tell your father?”

  “He said pay attention to my important classes.” He took a bite of the crust that lay on his plate. “I got B’s in algebra and technology.” He said it through his half-chewed pizza and his mother shook her head some more.

  “B minuses do not count as B’s.”

  “They’re not C’s, are they?” he said. “Then they must be B’s. Ma—”

  “Quit it,” the mother said. “Nobody likes a wiseass.” He stopped. When she started cussing, he knew to listen. “The stove downstairs needs wood,” she said. “I moved what was left upstairs before I left for school.”

  “Is there enough for tonight?” he asked.

  His mother shook her head and he frowned. This meant he’d have to haul wood over the twenty-five yards that lay between their house and the woodshed. It wasn’t a terrible chore, but he wondered why she couldn’t have just left enough for the night. He also wondered why the hell they’d built the woodshed so far from the house in the first place. Or why they were so stingy that they couldn’t let the oil furnace heat the place for a night.

  The mother finished her usual two slices of pizza and conscientiously left two pieces for lunch the following day. She sat and watched her son devour his half of the pie. He stuffed down bite after bite and the orange grease of cheese and sausage collected at the corners of his mouth. He wiped his face with the back of his hand.

  “Am I grossing you out?” he said.

  “You need to eat if you want to grow,” she said.

  He shook his head. He wanted to disgust her.

  “I want you to be big,” she told him. “So when you get married and we dance, I can put my head right here,” she patted the inside of her shoulder. “I want my hand to feel small in yours.”

  “That’s gross,” he said. He pushed his chair back and left the table.

  As much as he resented having to get the wood, he couldn’t deny that it was a beautiful night. The empty wheelbarrow bounced over the bumps and roots on the path to the woodshed. The cool evening air felt good on his still half-stoned head. He looked up and saw a handful of stars through the thick pine boughs. He smelled the cut wood in the shed some ten or twenty yards before he got there. He remembered scampering to his father’s lap in the evenings and the way he smelled after a day of cutting firewood—the thick scent of his perspiration mixed with chainsaw exhaust and the smell of the sawdust that still clung to his damp T-shirt. The father’s fragrance often contained a hint of cheap American pilsner. A great fondness for the man welled up in the boy, but it was quickly followed by a tremendous ache—his father was so, so far from him, standing in the backyard as he was, half stoned and torn up as hell. He stood for a moment and waited for it to pass. When it wouldn’t, he set to his work anyway, wiping at his nose with the coarse collar of his work glove.

  He was back inside, unloading his third wheelbarrow of wood, when he heard his mother call down to him.

  “What?” he shouted at the unfinished ceiling of the basement.

  “Get up here,” she hollered.

  “Goddammit,” the boy said to himself. He threw off the heavy leather gloves and set to shedding his boots for the trek upstairs.

  When he turned the corner at the top of the stairs, he saw Officer Duncan standing with his mother by the front door. The boy’s mind raced at the sight. He thought of the half-smoked joint in his bedroom. He thought of Mr. Benson and wondered if he’d finked on him.

  “Evening, Teddy,” Duncan said.

  The boy nodded and stopped where he was, halfway down the hall.

  “He wants to talk to you,”
the mother said.

  “Come here—I ain’t going to bite,” Duncan told him.

  The boy closed the distance between them and jammed his hands in his pants pockets.

  “I want to start by saying this is an unofficial visit.”

  “What’s that mean?” the mother asked him.

  “Means no one sent me. Means I’m here on my own.”

  Neither the boy nor his mother responded.

  “I’m here as a friend. To tell you I think they’ve got a case against Theodore.” Duncan shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I can’t say specifics but…do you mind if I come in and have a seat and we can talk about this?”

  “I think it’s best if you stay where you are,” the mother said.

  Duncan nodded. “I think it would look good if Teddy came clean. He could say he was in shock and afraid and not thinking right. I think we’d have a much better chance of getting him off.”

  “I think you should leave,” the mother said.

  “Donna? You’ve known me a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Yes I have,” she said. “But I’ve also lived here all my life and I can see how things are.” She shook her head and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “You’re going to scapegoat this kid so you all can come out looking shiny as hell and so you can keep selling off this town as a country club. You think they’re going to start moving here again if one of these kids gets killed and no one gets punished for it? Damn right they’re not. And more people eventually means more money for each of you, I know it. I know how it is, Dick.”

  Duncan stood speechless for a moment. “That’s quite a scheme you got cooked up,” he said. “But it ain’t right. I’m trying to tell you the best way through this thing that I can see. I’m insulted. I’ve always been square with you two.”

  “Say what you want, Dick, but this is my boy.” She pointed at him. “The only one I got in this world. Now, you want him, you can take him, but know that you’re going to have come through me. Because without him, nothing in this world means a thing to me.” She stopped and wiped at the outside corners of her eyes. “Now, as a friend,” she said. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, kindly.”

  “All right. But this is all I can do for you. This is the end of the road for me.”

  The mother nodded and closed the door behind him. She turned and looked at the boy. His eyes were wet. She stepped close and put her arms around him. He didn’t take his hands out of his pockets, but he let his face fall to her shoulder. His torso jumped with quick sobs.

  “Don’t you think we should tell?” he said.

  She shook her head. “They can lie, you know. They can say whatever they want to try and get you to talk. It’s legal for them to do it. I bet you anything he’s here because they hit a dead end. I bet they’re saying the same thing to Kevin as we speak.”

  “You think?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Trust me.” She stepped back from him. “Now go and finish the wood so you can get to sleep.”

  He nodded and headed back down to the basement.

  The following morning the boy showered and dressed. When he got to the kitchen, he found his mother at the table with her head in her hands. When she lifted her head, she looked distraught.

  “What?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “Mom?”

  “I don’t know why someone would do this to us,” she said. She pointed at the front of the house. He walked to a window.

  There was a helix of tire tracks across the lawn—brown dirt billowed over the grass where the tires had slid and spun. The mailbox had been knocked over and dashed in with a large rock that still sat atop it. The driveway bore two broken flowerpots, their soil spread in halos around them.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. He took a deep breath.

  “Do you know anything about this?” The mother stood behind him. “Could it be Kevin?”

  He shook his head. He felt ready to explode. Hadn’t Becker seen Colleen, smiling and talking with him? Wasn’t that enough?

  He winced when he heard his mother calling in sick.

  “Something just came over me,” she said. “I feel terrible.”

  The boy took the bus and fumed through school. Youth members smiled and chuckled at him in the hallways. He wanted to make a move on them: sucker punch one in the throat, throw a brick through a windshield in the parking lot, lob a Molotov cocktail through the storefront of George’s mother’s shop.

  He found Terry at lunch and told him what had happened and what he wanted to do.

  “No way,” Terry told him.

  “What?” the boy said.

  “We mess with them, they tell on us,” Terry said. “They’re tattletales. You know the type.”

  “Piss off,” said the boy.

  “You want to do something, go right ahead,” Terry said. “Just don’t count me in.”

  The boy left the lunch room. He couldn’t take the glaring eyes of the Youth any longer. He went to the bathroom and sat in the stall. If he’d had a cigarette he would have smoked it. If he’d had a lighter he would have burned himself. Instead he sat with his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees. He clenched his eyes as tightly as he could, but several small tears managed to push their way through the corners. He cursed himself for being so soft.

  He skulked through the rest of the school day and took his bus home. When he got off at his stop, he saw that the mailbox was gone and the driveway clear of debris. As he crossed the lawn, he stepped over the tire tracks. The billowed dirt had been raked flat and sprinkled with pale flecks of grass seed.

  He entered the house and greeted his mother but the two spoke little. He poured himself a glass of water and went to the couch. He turned on the television and bounced through the channels.

  The phone rang and his mother answered it. By the tone of her voice, he knew it was his father. She spoke with him for a moment and then held the receiver out to him.

  “He wants to talk to you,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  She nodded and shook the phone.

  He stood and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. He crossed the room and took the phone.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What is going on up there?” the father said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I find it hard to believe you know nothing about this lawn business.”

  The boy didn’t speak.

  “You can lie to me all you want,” said the father. “But you tell whoever did it, I ain’t you. When I come home I’m not going to lie in bed, pretending to be asleep while some kids tear up my property.”

  “Dad,” he said. “I don’t know who did it. I swear I didn’t even hear them.”

  “This really helps sell the house, you know,” the father said. “Me and your mother are killing ourselves trying to keep this family together and you keep doing the opposite.”

  “Dad—”

  “Ted, I know about the drugs,” the father said. “I got a phone call. And I got a good feeling this is something to do with that.”

  The boy held his breath. He didn’t speak.

  “Don’t you think you’ve put your mother through enough?” the father said. “Don’t you think? You’re going to quit that right now. And you’re coming down here with me soon as we can do the paperwork for school. Understand?”

  “What about Ma?”

  “What part of this don’t you understand?” the father said. “You’re under investigation for manslaughter. You keep messing around and you’re going to jail. Then what about your mother?”

  “I don’t want to go to jail.” He choked it out and a silence came over the line. “Dad?” he said.

  “Christ, Ted. I’ll do everything in my power. Everything I can. But you got to quit doing this stuff that can get you there. Understand?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Say it,” the father said. “Tell me you understan
d.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good,” the father told him. “We’ll get this all taken care of.”

  There was a moment of silence on the line.

  “I don’t want to move down there,” the boy said.

  “You say it like you have a choice.”

  “I do,” he said. “I do.”

  “You know what a fool you sound like?” the father said. “You don’t understand—”

  The boy pulled the phone away from his head and held it at arm’s length. He listened to the hollow outline of his father’s voice at that distance. He turned the phone over and gently put it back in the receiver.

  “If he calls back,” he told his mother, “I’m not talking to him.”

  Later that night the boy sat at the desk in his bedroom. He struggled with his homework, distracted as he was. He heard the phone ring through the closed door of his bedroom. The ringing stopped and he heard his mother call his name. He stood and went to the hall.

  “I’m not talking to him,” he said.

  “It’s Terry,” his mother called out from her bedroom.

  He rumbled down the stairs and picked up the phone in the kitchen. He waited for the click of his mother hanging up.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  “What are you doing?” Terry asked him.

  “Homework.”

  “Can you get out?”

  “Why?”

  “Can you?”

  “After she goes to sleep,” he said. “Why?”

  “Be out in your driveway at eleven.”

  He heard the click of Terry hanging up and he dropped the receiver back in the cradle. He went back to his room and sat at his desk. He struggled with his homework for the next hour and a half.

  At ten-thirty he stuffed pillows under the covers of his bed. He wrote a quick note to his mother:

  Mom,

  Don’t worry. I couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk. I’ll be back soon. I’m sorry about everything.

  Love, Ted

  He folded it and put it on the pillow, where she would easily find it, were she to turn on the lights. He pulled on a pair of jeans, grabbed a hooded sweatshirt from his closet, eased open the door of his room, and stepped out into the hallway. He listened. One cautious step at a time, he walked down the hall and down the stairs, stopping at the bottom to listen again. He went through the dark living room, carefully weaving around the coffee table and footstool. He turned and went down the stairs into the basement. At the bottom he listened, and when he heard nothing from the house above him, he walked quickly across the cement floor to the door outside. He eased it open and closed as quietly as possible and went around to the front of the house.