"He was your commanding officer. These things sometimes happen, I understand. Even in my day. This was before the rumors of steroid abuse in the military, of course. The over-use of nutritional supplements."
"That doesn't make it right, does it? What gives a man the right to do that, huh? What makes a man think he's got the right to lay his hands on someone like that?"
"You're speaking on behalf of the bullied. Do you look at what you've done as heroic?" Dean said nothing. Baswell prodded: "Shooting a man point-blank in the kneecap—did you think you were doing all of the bullied children a service? Fighting back for them? Or did you do it for the child you once were?"
"This is ridiculous."
"Tell me, then. Tell me about the first time you skipped school, Dean. I want your side of the story. So I know how to look at you. I haven't for a very long time, you know."
He'd known. Even back then, he'd sensed the distance growing between them. The prezzies had stopped that year, and the stories along with them. A tear streaked down his face. He let out a shivery breath. And told him everything.
THE FIRST TIME he'd skipped school, they'd been waiting for him: Patrick Cleary, Joel Suskin and Eugene Evans, the three meanest kids in the seventh grade. They'd chosen him because he was the smallest in their class. They'd hang him up in his locker and beat on him whenever the teachers weren't around. They'd bend him over his desk and beat on him in the portables before class started. Adults always said don't react—if you cry, if you whimper, you're giving them what they want, only feeding the fire. And Dean had tried not to react. He'd let them wail on him.
He knew what his father would have thought about it, but there was nothing he could do against the three boys together. If he'd gotten one of them alone... But no, they'd always traveled in packs, like those intelligent dogs in Moscow he'd read about recently. The bruises were easy enough to hide—on his legs, his back, his upper arms. His father had never suspected a thing.
They were waiting for him on his way to school, waiting on Quarry near the convenience store with the sign on its door written in childish uppercase script, "NO MORE THEN TWO (2) KIDS IN STORE AT A TIME!" Dean had spotted them before they saw him, and he'd made a run for it, up Juniper Road instead of Danber. Too late this time. They'd seen him before he rounded the corner, or heard his footfalls—maybe even smelled him, like the rabid dogs they were—and given chase. Patrick and Joel had longer legs than his; they were bigger, and took longer strides. The two biggest kids caught up to him in the lane alongside Catherine's fence, where it opened on the parking lot and Anderson Road. They threw him up against the fence boards, so hard his teeth rattled and the bell on the other side of the big pine door jingled, his head pressed up against the sign:
BEWARE OF DOG
The first bark startled all four of them. Eugene jumped a little, his rich black hair ruffling, then balled his small fists and made as if he hadn't been scared. Dull-eyed Joel threw the first punch. It hit Dean in the solar plexus and Dean doubled over, breathless, held firm against the gate by their large fists.
Gene ran in and threw half a dozen rabbit punches to Dean's guts and side. His knuckles struck hipbone on his last punch and he winced, stumbling backward, shaking away the pain.
"Lookit 'im!" Patrick shouted, laughing and pointing at Gene with his free hand. "Lookit the little pussy!"
The dog was barking, barking. Dean felt the pain bunch in his innards and shoot upward, lodging somewhere behind his eyeballs where the barks doubled, trebled in his brain. He was a thermometer stuck in an oven, the mercury rising up its shaft; the bulb was his skull. He was a nuclear missile, the warhead about to explode. He was the Strength Tester at the Spring Fair, the one with the big hammer and the ball, and the bell was his head. Hit it hard enough and win a prize.
Did he barked as he kicked? Dean couldn't remember now, but it felt like he had. He did remember he couldn't see a thing, had only kicked out blindly as hard as he could. He remembered his sneaker hitting something firm and yielding, hearing one of them cry out in agony. The grip on his right shoulder let go, and he fell down hard on the ball of his right foot (later it would bruise, and then hurt for a week). He'd struck Joel square in the balls, and the brunt of Dean's weight had torn his left shoulder free from Patrick's grip.
"H-holy shit!" Gene stuttered, and finally the world came back into focus. Gene wasn't stuttering but laughing, because in spite of the beating he would get from his two larger cohorts, in spite of the sympathy pain any boy feels when another kid get wailed in the balls, it was funny when it happened. It was even sort of laughable when it happened to you. "Ha-ha-holy shit, Patty! Right in the dinger!"
Patrick stood over Joel, who was crying—crying! "Shut up, Eugene," he said. Gene shut up, even though he hated when kids called him that: Eugene. Because Patrick could make him shut up if he wouldn't do it on his own. "Stop cryin' you fuckin' baby," the biggest and baddest boy shouted down at Joel.
Dean looked around. He might be able to escape to the left, but there were metal posts in the way, blocking cars from entering the lane, and if he had to skirt around them (there was no way he could jump them, the way his legs were jittering), Patrick's reach was long enough to grab him and pull him back. Gene blocked forward advance, and Joel was curled up directly to Dean's right, in the direction of Danber. At Dean's feet, where the fence opened on the parking lot, was a chunk of cinderblock.
He stooped.
Patrick wheeled around with a monstrous look, as Dean rose with the blunted weapon. "What are you gonna do, pussy?" he sneered. "You gonna hit me with that? Huh, pussy? I dare you, Pean." It was what Patrick had always called him: Pean, a cross between Dean and penis. "I fuckin' dare you."
The dog leaped behind the gate, rattling it against his back. The warhead went off and Dean swung. Hit the bell, win a prize.
Patrick's left cheek tore open and blood immediately filled the space where his skin had peeled back. There was a sound like breaking glass and the dull reverberation shuddered back up Dean's arm as the concrete struck bone. Something small and brilliantly white flew from this gaping, bleeding orifice: a molar, the sun glinting off its amalgam filling as it twirled, plinking against the fence of the opposite house. Eyes wide in fear and pain, Patrick's hand came up to his face. Red oozed like syrup through his fingers and dribbled on the sidewalk.
Dean wanted to laugh, but what he did was bark. Later, he would decide it was this unconscious decision which had probably saved his life. "WOOF!" he said. "WOOF! WOOF!"
Gene looked to Patrick, to Joel, to Dean—who was still barking, and the dog, rattling against the door, matched him bark for bark—and the truth of it dawned on Gene's dirty little freckled face. "You're crazy!" he shouted. Then he split.
Like Patrick's face, Dean thought. And laughed.
Patrick's face was chalk white where he wasn't red. He tried to speak, but no words came out. Only "Bluh," and a mouthful of spit-bubbly blood, which splashed down his chin, into the teenaged scruff on his neck and down the front of his shirt. Joel struggled to his feet, giving Dean a baleful look.
Dean bared his teeth at him and growled.
Joel's eyes went wide. He looked away immediately, before shuffling off with his throbbing balls in his hands. Patrick turned tail and followed, leaving a wet trail of himself along the way. He rounded the corner and was gone.
Finally, Dean dropped the bloodied piece of concrete, amazed and shocked by his courage, by his rage. I'm an animal, he thought, and the thought both frightened and amused him.
The bell above the gate jingled. He didn't realize he'd fallen back against it until it swung inward, and he fell into the arms of Mr. Priest.
And then Dean Vogel, fearless for the first time in his life, burst into tears. The Priests' White Shepherd whimpered and stepped into his lap, licking the tears from his eyes and cheeks and lips. Dean's first ever kiss—and it was from a dog.
IN DR. BASWELL'S office, Dean gripped the leather armrests, r
emembering everything.
"I didn't skip school because I was ashamed of what I did. I wasn't afraid of the consequences," he admitted. "I couldn't face the other kids. I knew they'd look at me different. Like you did." Dr. Baswell nodded grimly. "And because of how good it felt when that goddamn thing hit his face. I felt his bones, Uncle Tim. I felt like an animal—and I dunno, maybe I am."
"No more an animal than any of us, Dean. You could only take so much abuse before you struck back. It was inevitable. You were outnumbered, a child pushed to the edge, and you struck out with whatever you could find."
But Dean didn't want Baswell's sympathy or anyone's. He wanted reproach. He deserved it. "And Sandman? I fucking shot a man because he pushed me up against a wall. I took out my SIG and kneecapped him. That sound like the behavior of a rational human being to you, or the killer instincts of an animal?"
Baswell wouldn't, or couldn't, answer.
"The worst thing about it? I fucking enjoyed it, Uncle Tim. When his knee burst out of his khakis, I laughed. I had his blood on my face and I was laughing. And they were staring at me, all of them. Fucking stupefied. Just like that day outside Catherine's house. Maybe some of them wished they could've done the same thing. Shit, maybe Joel and Eugene would've done what I did to Patrick, if they had the guts."
Baswell set his pad down on the desk. "No barking, though."
"Huh?"
Beethoven signaled the end of the hour. They sat in silence a moment, letting the song play out, letting the bell chime two o'clock.
"When you shot Corporal Sandman," Baswell said finally, "you didn't bark."
"No."
"You didn't consciously attempt to kill Patrick Cleary, did you?"
"No. I just wanted it to be over."
"And Sandman? Were you aiming for somewhere higher?"
"Isn't it your lunchtime?"
"It can wait."
Dean nodded. "Well, actually, I was aiming for his foot."
"Then I suppose you're not an animal, are you? Just a man. With frailties and anxieties. Just like anyone else."
Dean wasn't sure if Baswell was pulling his leg. "Are you serious? You don't think I'm—you don't think I'm crazy?"
"Wounded, certainly. High-strung. I'd recommend anger-management training." Baswell allowed himself to smile. "But no, Dean, I don't believe you're crazy, not for a minute." He stood, and as he took Dean's hand, he pulled him in for a hug. Dean let Uncle Tim hug him a moment, amused and baffled, then wrapped his own arms around the man and hugged him back.
Uncle Tim broke the embrace, but he held Dean by the shoulders a moment longer to regard him. "I'm going to sign off on your papers," he said, letting him go. "But I want you to do me a favor."
"Anything," Dean said, smoothing out his shirt, trying to cover his relief.
"Apologize to the Cleary boy. Man. Make it sincere. Make things right between the two of you."
"After all he did?"
"You put him in the hospital for a month. Your father had to wire his jaw shut. Patrick's parents couldn't afford dentures—they simply pulled the broken teeth and left him with the holes. He's got no molars on the upper left side of his mouth."
"Jesus. Really?"
A grim nod from Baswell.
"Wow," Dean said, truly shocked by the news, having never seen Patrick again after that day. Rumor had it the boy had moved to a different school out of shame, and Dean had never thought to question it. "I guess now I know why everyone started looking at me different afterwards. He wants to kill me, though, Uncle Tim. Gene—Eugene Evans—he told me Patrick called him drunk in the middle of the night when he found out I was in town."
"I suspect that's just bravado talking," Baswell said. "You have to remember, the culture of violence machismo produces—"
"All right, all right," Dean said, throwing up his hands. "I'll say I'm sorry."
"Good," Baswell said, and let Dean go.
BASWELL VOUCHING FOR Dean's progress had the effect on the Vogel house of a medium telling her clients their home was free of evil. His mother stopped jumping at the sound of his voice, and his father began to be civil. Uncle Tim told them about the repeated bullying, and that the hit with the cinderblock had been (mostly) accidental. He told them the shooting of his commanding officer had been a direct response to the bullying, albeit years after the fact. Having struggled with bullying for so long without reaction, Dean had found himself unable to tolerate it in his adult life. He dealt with it by lashing out the moment it seemed anybody was persecuting him or others.
Larry and Diane Vogel listened to Dr. Baswell for over an hour, sharing coffee in the Vogel kitchen while Dean lay on his childhood bed, staring up at the blank ceiling. Listening to their murmurs through the vents reminded him too much of childhood: the worrying, the self-doubt, the paranoia. They were talking about him again, and it couldn't be good. He caught snippets of conversation: so violent... didn't raise him that... he's just lucky we didn't... if this was all about that, then why now?
Dean put on the Synchronicity tape to drown out their conversation, but the music began to distort mid-song, slowing down, with "Tea in the Sahara" playing over top of "Synchronicity I" as the whir and tick of the gears grew louder than the music. He pulled the cassette from the deck, noticing the tape had twisted, and turned on the radio, straightening the tape and rewinding it with a pencil from his rolltop desk while the music drowned out his parents. When he came down to get a snack, half an hour or so after he'd heard the front door shut, his mom and dad were still seated at the table, holding hands. Their eyes were dry but red-rimmed; they'd been crying. Even his father had been crying.
Oh Jesus, this is too much.
"Son, your mater and I have something to tell you," Larry said.
Dean leaned up against the counter, waiting. His father breathed in deeply through his nose. What he had to say was clearly hard for him, but he managed to start after a small squeeze from his wife's hand. "How we treated you after the incident. We had no idea what those boys were doing to you. If we'd known... If only you'd told us... Maybe things would have been different around here."
"What your father's trying to say is 'We're sorry,'" Diane said, and blinked, smiling wistfully. Larry gave her a look, made a thin smile of his own, then nodded at Dean. He's not going to say it, though, is he? Dean thought.
"We're sorry," his father parroted.
But does he mean it? Is it like me, apologizing to Patrick because Uncle Tim asked me to? Is this a favor to Tim or Mom, or does he really—sincerely—mean it?
A tear streaked down his father's bristly cheek. The old man blinked it away, nodded again, mechanically, as if his nodding could stop the tears.
Dean slumped down at the table with them. His mother found his hand. His father took the other. They sat around the kitchen table and wept, while the sink dripped and the house settled... and outside, somewhere, Patrick Cleary was planning to murder him.
ALL THAT WEEK, Dean prepared for his confrontation with Patrick. No weapons this time, just talk. Man to man. He went over various scenarios in his head. The first were pure hostility: Patrick would not speak to him, would just slam the door in his face and tell Dean to get the fuck off his property. Another: Patrick would punch him the second Dean set foot on his doorstep. Dean would take the punch, gladly, but he wouldn't allow another. He'd ask him if it helped, if it made him feel any better. If Yes, he'd apologize right away. If No, he would ask what it would take to resolve their conflict. Aside from "I wanna break your face like you broke mine," he thought he could manage most possibilities.
He also prepared for an altogether different scenario. Patrick might let him speak, and Dean would tell the truth: that he didn't want to apologize, it was just the final step in his government-mandated therapy. He would tell him what had happened in Kandahar with Master Corporal Sandman. Patrick would ask if that was his real name, and Dean would laugh and tell him "No bullshit, man." Patrick would invite him in for a beer, and the
two men would bond over the douchebaggery of bureaucracy and the seemingly endless struggle of being a kid.
It had even crossed his mind that Patrick Cleary might come to him, and rather than let Patrick ambush him on a darkened street while he jogged with music blasting in his ears, Dean put in some research.
At 7 AM that Friday, he parked outside the front gates at the Rockland Mine, down the far west end of Quarry Road. Patrick worked the overnight shift, seven to seven. Dean had learned this from Gene Evans, who seemed to know an awful lot about Patrick for someone who hadn't spoken to him in years, aside from that recent late-night phone call. He and Dean had caught up over a beer. The meeting had mostly been about acquiring information, so Dean had tried to keep the conversation light. Gene was an engineer (he hadn't specified what type of engineer, and Dean hadn't inquired), and had married Linda Braun right out of high school. Dean vaguely remembered her, a mousey thing with flat-cut bangs, and congratulated him. Gene and Linda Evans had three kids. In the photos, Dean saw they all had Eugene's lustrous dark hair and beady black eyes. Gene had gotten too drunk, perhaps sensing Dean's distance, and had eventually begun to cry and paw at Dean, begging for forgiveness. Dean had put him in a cab and sent him home. He'd gone back to the bar and paid their tab.
"Awww, you kittens okay?" the beefy bartender had asked.
"Mind your fucking business," Dean had responded, and left the jerk without a tip.
Patrick came out of the mine entrance at ten after seven, laughing. He whipped his trucker cap up in the air like Mary Tyler Moore. It caught in the wind, and he had to run and duck to catch it before it hit the ground. Decent reflexes. He was still large-framed, bigger than Dean had remembered. But he was scrawny, the sort of wiry fitness an ectomorph built up from physical labor, without concentration on specific muscle groups. If he had to, if Patrick decided one punch wasn't quite enough, Dean felt he could subdue him. He was used to fighting more than one man at a time, after all. Sometimes, as he had in the desert, even women.
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