The Buddy
After school, Robert and Scott would wait at the bus stop with a crowd of other kids.
Sometimes Robert made lists of things that he should never say to Scott. One item that appeared regularly was, “I love you.”
Robert was not handsome, but Scott was.
The truck was equipped with a noisy exhaust and painted bright red. A loudspeaker jutted from just above the windshield.
“You’re a comedian,” Scott would say to Robert. “Come on, be funny.”
Robert was out walking the dusty path that ran beside Amoring Lake. He carried a sharpened stick, spearing anything he found clinging to the fence line.
He would have given anything to drive such a loud and threatening machine.
Although he did pushups before bed each night, Robert’s build remained small—with the exception of his chest, where his fatty little breasts swayed under his shirt as he walked.
Scott was skating around in the gas station parking lot, jumping steps and abandoned tires. A younger boy sat watching him on the curb, eating an ice cream cone.
“What’s up, Robjob?” Scott said.
“Just gonna try and buy cigarettes.”
Scott pointed to the boy at the curb, who had chocolate running down his pale arm. “This is Stewart, my little brother.”
He spoke in a reedy, frog-mouthed way, telling Scott dirty things about girls that happened to walk by. “Go put this banana you know where,” he would say, or “I gotta put this tongue somewhere soon or I’ll choke on it.”
Stewart giggled, and held out a dripping hand. “Puterthere,” he said. He giggled again.
Robert spied a piece of animal feces in the weeds. He smeared his right hand in it and bent low to shake hands.
A throng of kids stood at the bus stop beneath a budding elm tree. Robert had an erection—born of nothing—that had been with him since fifth period.
Stewart threw the half-eaten cone away and looked uncertainly at his brother. Scott was doubled-over.
“Robjob is the nastiest!” Scott howled. “The nastiest! Come hang out for a while.”
On the south side of the intersection, across from the lake, stood the Shell station, where the driver of the truck was rumored to work.
He stood and waited with his hands clasped inconspicuously across his crotch, occasionally smiling at Scott. Scott stood anxiously on his skateboard, snapping his bubblegum.
The three of them walked down Fairfield in the late afternoon sun. Stewart ran ahead chasing butterflies, his curls flopping.
“Puterthere,” he said, making the frog voice. “Puterthere.”
Scott’s house was dusty and cluttered and smelled of overripe produce. There were two cramped bedrooms, and in one of them, Scott shared a bunk bed with Stewart.
They saw the truck down the way. It sat idling in an intersection, behind a bent stop sign. Suddenly the truck roared and peeled out, spraying dust and gravel up onto the hoods of other vehicles. The boys around Robert began to lose control. “Oh, shit,” they cried. “Holy shit.”
Scott picked up a crusty-looking book off the floor, entitled The History of Philosophy. He thumbed through it. “Lots of cool ideas in there,” he said. Robert asked to borrow the book, but Scott squinched up his eyes and said, “Nah.”
“Hey guys,” said the voice from within the truck. Some of the boys nodded. Others, unable to hide their enthusiasm, jumped and waved. The tinted window slid down.
Scott showed Robert his father’s collection of dirty videotapes. Then they went to the backyard and scooped dirt into an old pie tin. They tried to serve it to Stewart, telling him it was chocolate.
He was neither old nor particularly young, and he held a PA in his hand and spoke into it. “Hey,” he said, the nasal voice full of static, his finger stabbing through the open window. Robert turned to find that the driver had targeted Scott.
“My brother doesn’t know a damn thing,” Scott said.
Then they placed Stewart in the middle of the trampoline, and bounced him until he lost his footing and rolled off onto the concrete.
“You hang around the Shell station sometimes?” said the voice. “With that kid brother?”
“Sure,” Scott said, “My brother’s a dumbshit. Follows me everywhere.”
“When I was his age I had already run away from home, twice,” Scott said. The afternoon passed, and Scott rushed Robert out the side yard when he heard the garage door open.
“You need a lift home?” the driver said. The man’s expression said that it did not matter one way or another.
Robert was still standing under the tree when the truck made a second pass. The passenger door popped open, and Scott motioned to him from within. Robert sprinted to the truck and dove inside.
“If it’s on your way.”
“Sure it’s on my way.”
“I’m not allowed to have friends over,” he said. “My dad’s only rule. Stewart knows I’ll kill him if he tells.”
The driver reached a hand across to Robert. “Name’s Clay,” he said. “We were halfway home when Scott said you’d kill someone if you never got to ride in this truck.”
At lunchtime, it was raining and the students huddled under the eaves in clusters, leaning against the stucco walls.
“Saturday’s the car wash,” a girl named Julie said. She was a cheerleader.
“I’ll be there,” Scott said. “One way or another.”
“It’s a fundraiser,” Julie said. “We need new uniforms.”
He drove intensely, weaving in and out of traffic. He slammed on the brakes and screamed epithets with a smile.
“How old are you, Clay?” Robert said.
“How old are you?” Clay said.
“We’re both thirteen,” Robert said.
“Just double that,” Clay said. “Piece a cake.”
Each day, Clay would pick them up from school and drive to Scott’s house.
“Scooter over here made me.” Clay nudged Scott. “Said you were the funniest guy he knew.”
“Naw,” Robert said. “Paul,” he said. “Paul Spielman’s a lot funnier than me. He can do that thing with his pinky.”
Clay smoked indoors, helped himself to the liquor cabinet, and made himself at home. At 4:00 each afternoon, Robert was politely asked to leave.
“Come on,” Scott said. “Do the frog.”
“I like jokes,” Clay said.
“Robert doesn’t tell jokes,” Scott said. “He does voices.”
Clay dropped Robert off at the corner of Fairfield and Lupine with a pat on the back and a promise to see him again.
“Why?” Robert would ask.
Clay and Scott were smiling, waiting. Robert glanced out the window. A very old woman in a white suit was slumped behind the wheel of her Buick.
Robert caught a fever. He thrashed uselessly in his bed. His mother entered his room and said that he was blessed to have a home and a family, especially a mother who cared for him. “Some mothers throw their kids out on the street,” she warned.
“Hey man,” Clay would say. “Scott’s my best buddy. Best buddies gotta have their time together.” Then he would mess Scott’s blond hair.
Robert became the frog. “I want to unbutton that blouse and show grandma what a good grandson I am,” he croaked. “Young or old, it don’t matter to me.”
“Saw you chilling in that big-ass truck,” said Julie.
“Yeah, Clay and I are buddies,” Scott said. “Went over to my house yesterday, watched a couple movies. Clay’s into shit I never even knew existed.”
Robert started a rumor at the middle school, that Scott and Clay were lovers. It spread quickly.
“It makes sense,” Robert heard a lanky basketball player say as they passed each other. “It makes sense because the truck is so high, nobody can see what they do inside it.”
“Don’t talk to me about that gay shit,” Scott said. He crossed his arms. “This is Robert, girls. He knows Clay too. Clay thinks he’s a funny motherfucker.”
One night, Robert woke from a bad dream, dressed, and silently crept out of his house. He headed to the Shell station.
“Clay is hot,” said another girl, Heather, who kept flinging her hair. “You think so, Scott? Would you do him?”
Robert spent his lunch hour near the tennis courts, alone. He spat into the gravel until his throat was dry. I am a man on the lam, he thought, but he didn’t believe it. I am a real fucker, he thought, and this felt more appropriate. A fucker and a liar.
Clay was sitting behind bulletproof glass, under a yellow light.
“You’re a comedian,” Scott would say to Robert. “Come on, be funny.”
Robert knocked on the glass. Clay smiled and put down his book.
“Robjob.” he said. “Hello, stranger.”
“You’re funny, huh?”
“Tell us a joke. Something dirty.”
“I don’t know any jokes.”
“He does voices, girls.”
“Scott’s just fucking around.”
“Nasty habit,” Clay said. He slid a pack and some matches through the night drawer. “On me. What are you doing in twenty minutes?”
“Nothing,” he said.
Robert inhaled through his nose and listened to his body. He walked to Heather, threw his arms around her, and pushed his tongue in her mouth. There was a choking sound.
“Here’s what you do. Run across the intersection, and hop the fence. Smoke yourself a couple of cigarettes and take a seat on the picnic benches. I’m off in twenty. We’ll watch the sunrise over the lake.”
“Lonely,” Robert said. It just slipped out.
“The nastiest!” Scott yelled.
The cigarette made him dizzy; he stamped it out with his shoe. He heard Clay struggle over the chain-link fence, which rattled feebly.
Robert found Scott out on the football field. He was also alone. “Hey,” Robert said.
“I guess you’ve heard the rumor,” Scott said.
They sat with their eyes to the lake. Clay wore tapered blue jeans and white sneakers.
“How’s Scott?” Robert said.
“He was moping around all last week, but he’s fine now. He’s pretty cute when he’s got something on his mind. My little buddy. . . .”
“You don’t even know half of what Clay knows,” Scott yelled. “He knows everything. I wish these fuckers could understand what I’ve given to have a friend like that. They have no idea. Friends like that don’t come cheap.”
“He’s my buddy, too,” Robert said.
“I’m no pussy,” Scott said. “Clay’s no pussy either. You’ll see.” He indicated with his hands that he wished to be left alone.
“No,” Clay said, “I would say he isn’t. Scott is your friend, though he might not think so now. Not your buddy. There’s a difference.” Clay coughed into his hand and then spat in the grass.
“Clay’s weird,” Robert said. “He’s too old.”
“A buddy is someone you take under your wing when they need help, someone that can’t stand alone on their own two feet. A friend is different. Friendship is based on mutual respect. Scott respects you.”
“Clay wants to get his truck washed,” Scott reported. “He wants you to come.”
“He’s a good kid. I saw his need for guidance, and I answered it. Have you seen the condition of their house? Mom is gone. And Dad? Where is Dad? Working, golfing. They are better off now. I cook and I clean. And I listen to Scott when he’s got something troubling him. That little brother of his is a real pain in the ass, though. Very demanding. Stewart is not my buddy, I can tell you that.”
“ROBJOB! ROBJOB!” Clay said through the PA. “WE HAVE A DIRTY MISSION TO ACCOMPLISH. BOARD THE VEHICLE AT YOUR OWN RISK!”
Scott stopped waiting at the bus stop after school. Instead, when the bell rang, he skated off school grounds as fast as he could, to a shady spot where the red truck was waiting.
A sliver of the red sun was visible as it climbed a distant foothill.
“Do you and Scott do things together?” Robert said.
“Be more specific, Robjob.”
“Husband and wife things.”
Robert picked up the phone. It was Scott. “I need you to come over here as fast as you can,” Scott said.
“Like picnics? TV after dinner? I don’t understand.” Clay was smiling wide.
“You know what I mean.”
Clay shook is head.
“Fucking,” Robert said. “Blowjobs.”
Clay rolled down the window. “Hey, sweetie,” he said. “Don’t get the PA system wet, OK?” Then he rolled it up again.
“I called you from out here,” Scott said, leaning against the tree in his front yard. “I’m not supposed to be out here.”
“Heard about your French kiss,” he said to Robert. “Maybe you’ll get to finish what you started.”
He put a finger to his lips. “Come with me. Be quiet. Be really quiet. I have to show you something.”
“Ooooooh,” Clay said. “That really was one nasty rumor that got started.”
“Yeah.”
“Kids have come by the station when I’m working. They throw eggs at the glass. They’ve even slashed the tires on my truck.”
“Where’s my watchdog?” he said, croaking hoarsely. “Did my watchdog abandon his post?”
“Would you ever do those kind of things?” Robert said. “The husband and wife stuff.”
“Why do you ask?”
The bedroom door opened a crack, and Clay peered into the hallway. He began muttering everything Robert had said in the voice of the frog.
“If you wanted to do them with me that would be OK with me,” Robert said. Clay laughed. Then he laughed again. “You remind me of myself when I was your age,” he said.
“I’m not like you.”
“Give it a few years and then we’ll see.”
“Man oh man, look at those titties! What would you give to stick your dick right in between those?” The girls smiled as they worked.
“Robert, do a voice,” Scott said.
“I like to come out here before work and watch the ducks.”
His arm extended toward the closed white door. “Just so you know it wasn’t me he wanted,” Scott said.
Robert looked at the brown water. There were no ducks—none visible, anyway.
“I’m gonna tell you a secret,” Clay said, “but you can’t tell anyone.”
“Do you like it?”
“What?”
“The lake.”
“Not really.”
“Ha. Me neither.”
He rolled up the window, and the girls began hosing the truck down. Then they took to it with soapy sponges.
“So,” he said. “No voices?” He fixed his green eyes on Robert.
“No voices,” Robert said. “Not for a while.”