As I stared out the smudged window of the SUV as it pulled into the crowded school parking lot jammed with Dragon football fans, all I could think about was how stupid it all was: not just football games and cheerleaders, but high school. When I was with Brody, even getting into trouble like at the arcade, I didn’t feel like some stupid kid. I felt the rush of becoming a man.
“Thanks for the ride,” I told Aaron’s stepdad. He’s this nice, balding, middle-aged man with no personality. Jumping out of the car, Brody disappeared into a group milling around the buses, so I was left with Aaron. The adrenaline still pumped through my body and poured out through my mouth. I asked Aaron something I’d wanted to for a long time. “So, what’s he like?”
“Who?” Aaron answered.
“Your stepdad,” I said. Conversation with Aaron and me was always awkward, especially if I asked him questions. He’d rather listen to Brody than reveal himself to us.
“He’s all right, I guess,” Aaron said, and then pulled up his hoodie against the wind.
“Really?” I asked. I sometimes wondered if my life would be different—and I wasn’t sure for better or worse—if ex-Dad was dead like Aaron’s and Brody’s fathers. Maybe I would love him more, or not at all, if he wasn’t around. I envied Aaron and Brody in some weird way.
“No, not really,” Aaron mumbled, his eyes firmly focused on the pavement. “He must think I’m stupid or something not to know what this is all about.”
“What?” I asked, but I knew. Now that his sister’s out of the house, he was virtually an only child. I have this strange anger at Aaron’s stepdad for moving Aaron out of the neighborhood. Where he lived—the new Lake Breeze subdivision—was full of new homes and fancy cars. It seemed like another world, even if it shared a common wooded area with WindGate. Swartz Creek’s messed up that way: it is full of old trailer parks, new subdivisions, and a glaring imbalance. It’s not a creek, but a river of truth about unfairness.
“This: you know, the rides, the vacations, all of it,” Aaron said. “He doesn’t want in to my life. He just wants in to my mom’s pants.”
“Dude, that’s harsh.”
“Dude, that’s what the truth is,” Aaron replied, head straight down. “Where’s Brody?”
“Who knows?” I said, then surveyed the crowd for Brody’s familiar head. Before I could say anything else, my world turned to white noise when I saw Whitney along with Shelby walking toward the bus.
Aaron saw the same vision. “Here’s your chance.”
I took a deep breath, and then started off on my second long walk of the night, telling myself I feared nothing. “Whitney, wait up!” I yelled, earning a nasty glare from Shelby. Her eyes were like barbed wire trying to keep me out of the Whitney World.
Whitney turned to face me, then spoke. “You going to the game tonight?”
“Maybe,” I muttered, then pointed at the bus. “Seems I only get to see you on a bus.”
“I guess,” Whitney said as Shelby cleared her throat. “Hey, we have to go.”
“Can I ask you something?” My head was down, palms open, heart yearning.
“We have to go,” Shelby answered. “Maybe your ears don’t work as well as your eyes.”
“Whitney, I need a second,” I said. Shelby looked at Whitney, who stared back at me.
“Save me a seat,” Whitney said, then took a step back. Shelby rolled her eyes, but walked toward the bus. I was ready to say, Whitney, I know you don’t know me that well, but I really like you. Or would like to get to know you. Would you like to go to homecoming with me?
“I have to go, can’t this wait?” she said.
“Um, well, homecoming is coming up and—” I started but then saw the look on her face: a strange mix of sympathy, pity, and embarrassment. I wouldn’t need to remember her rejection of my offer because I never got to make it. Her nonanswer saved my life.
“Mick, I have to go,” she said as she turned and walked away. Her long blond hair was the yellow brick road not taken. Whitney was the last one on the bus, which pulled away moments later. I was left alone in the middle of a large gray parking lot with my thoughts and the imagined sound of laughter from Shelby falling over me like a cold rain. I turned on my heel then walked back to my friends. I knew by the time we saw the bottom of the bottle, I wouldn’t be thinking about Whitney, Nicole, Shelby, or anyone. By the last swallow, I wanted only one thing: not to be thinking or feeling anything.
· · ·
“She blew me off, like I was garbage,” I told Brody and Aaron as we left the school parking lot a few moments later.
But as the words left my mouth, I wished I could have taken them back. Brody pounded his right fist into his open left palm. “Whitney’s a stuck-up bitch!” he yelled.
“Forget it. It’s over,” I mumbled, barely audible over the rustle of the leaves on the back road.
“You’re too easy on people who treat like you shit!” Brody shouted. We wanted to stay out of sight and off the main roads on our way to the Miller Road Big K stop-and-rob. We needed smokes, snacks, and Coke to cut the rum. The Coke made it taste better and made the evening last longer. We had three hours of game time before we had to get back to school for Aaron’s mom to pick us up.
The Big K on Miller was pretty run down, even for the Creek. The security cameras inside and outside were the most valuable things attached to the store. The three of us walked in together and the fat middle-aged woman behind the counter stared us down. We decided to forgo any food. Aaron grabbed a liter of Coke, and we headed to the front. I loudly spilled a bunch of change onto the counter, most of which fell on the floor behind. Once the woman’s head disappeared under the counter, Brody snatched a pack of Marlboros from behind her, then buried them quickly inside his hooded sweatshirt. By the time the woman looked up, Brody was out the door. Aaron grabbed the Coke, and we started to leave.
“Here,” the woman said as she held out the receipt. “You gave me too much.”
“Keep the change!” I yelled at her as I snatched the receipt. I laughed loudly at Brody’s five-finger discount and at my strange ex-Dad defiance: let this woman count the change, not me.
Brody and Aaron were waiting in the area behind the store. Brody had the smokes buried in his pocket just in case the security camera was actually on and somebody was really watching. With a murder a week in the Flint area, I knew nobody would care about petty crime. We exchanged high fives all around, then started to head toward WindGate. I could see the dim light of the trailer park from a distance, but Aaron—who was leading—stopped in his tracks.
“What’s wrong, dude?” Brody shouted.
“Shit, I’m not sure which way to go from here,” Aaron said. “Sorry.”
I looked in front of me: there were two paths converging in the woods. “Which one?”
“I don’t know,” Aaron mumbled, unused to leading. That was usually Brody’s job, not his.
“Mick? You must be able to smell it from here,” Brody said, then laughed.
I scratched my forehead, then pointed down the path to the left. “This way, I think.”
We forged over fallen branches, the twigs snapping beneath us sounding like fire.
“Who is it?” A strange garbled voice yelled out, which startled us all.
“Look, it’s the Scarecrow,” Brody said, then pointed at the figure in the straw hat who must have been equally as surprised. He was running, or limping quickly, away from us.
“What’s he doing here?” I asked no one in particular.
“Living,” Aaron offered. I wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question.
“If you call it that,” Brody said, then motioned for us to join him off the beaten path. Behind one of the trailers was a small storage shed with the door hanging off the hinge. We looked inside: there was a damp green sleeping bag, empty beer cans, and newspapers covering the cold ground. There was a small pile of bricks forming a makeshift fireplace or stove in the corner. The place reeked of piss, shit, and beer.
“My sister’s got to get to work,” Aaron said as he nudged me on my way.
“Work,” I said, then winked at Brody. Brody laughed while Aaron tried not to. Unlike the night before when he was pretty talkative, Aaron seemed sunk into himself. Brooding.
Aaron’s sister was standing in front of the trailer, looking twenty shades of pissed off. She waved us in; Aaron didn’t say anything as she handed him a paper bag. Aaron reached into his pocket, but Brody stopped him with a shout, barely heard over the blaring TV.
“Hey, Aaron, loan me twenty bucks,” Brody said, then slapped Aaron on his shoulder.
“What?” Aaron looked confused, while his sister’s overly made-up face didn’t hide her scorn.
“Sure.” Aaron took the money intended for his sister and handed it to Brody.
“I’m buying! Drinks on me!” Brody shouted, then handed the twenty to Aaron’s sister.
“Real funny,” Aaron’s sister, Tonya, said as she reached out her hand to take the money from Brody, but I interrupted.
“My treat,” I said. Aaron gave us the place, and Brody gave us a center, so I could pay with my unused homecoming funds. In our threesome, their roles were clear; I was still searching for mine.
“Dude, no way,” Brody said, but I ignored him and handed her the money.
“What, no receipt?” I mumbled as Tonya took the cash and I took the bag. She handed me back a five and one icy stare when I counted the change.
“You be gone by the time I get home,” she said. I wondered how she could move her mouth wearing so much frosted blue lipstick and how she could blink with the mountain of matching blue eye shadow covering her mostly dead blue eyes. She pulled out a smoke and then stuffed the twenty into her small black purse. The purse matched the long leather black jacket and short leather skirt she wore, but not the spiky red heels or scarlet fishnets.
“Need a light?” I asked.
“Thanks,” she replied. My hand shook a little when I sparked the flint to fire up her smoke. Truth was, Aaron’s sister’s in-your-face-skank look more scared than excited me.
“We’ve got to get back to school by ten,” Aaron said.
“And if you get caught, I don’t know nothin’ about this,” she said. “I’m dead serious.”
“Sure thing, Tonya,” Aaron mumbled.
“And don’t mess up the place,” she said. I laughed first, Brody laughed loudest, and Aaron for the first time that night cracked a smile. “Assholes!”
“Sorry, Tonya,” Aaron said. Brody tossed aside a pile of clothes on the stained brown carpet to make a place for himself on the sofa. He muted the TV as he surfed channels.
“Maybe I’ll tell Mom about this,” she fired back, smoke shooting out of her pierced nose. “Maybe your Friday night fun dries up. You think that’s funny?”
“Sorry,” I mumbled while Brody added a concurring grunt from the other room.
“Next time, price goes up,” she said, then opened the door to leave. “How funny is that?”
Aaron didn’t say anything as she slammed the door so hard the trailer seemed to shake. The booming music from her beat-up SUV started up almost immediately.
“Your sister’s something!” Brody shouted as we heard the SUV pull away.
“You got something to say, Brody?” Aaron said, looking embarrassed, sounding angry.
“He’s just busting you,” I said, trying to act the peacemaker. “It’s all good.”
“I know, but you know how it is,” Aaron said to me, as he handed me the Coke.
“How what is?”
“You gotta protect the women in your life, right?” Aaron said, and I smiled.
“I guess.” I started toward the kitchen. As I thought about Aaron’s comment, I felt a little guilty about lying to my mom, but I figured I’m really just doing what Aaron just said: protecting her from the truth of my life.
In the kitchen, I found three clean glasses that I filled with ice.
“Hurry up, Mick, thirsty men over here!” Brody shouted from the living room. It sounded like a college football game was blaring on the TV. I laughed. Now I could tell my mom a truth about what we did tonight: just watched a football game.
I brought the glasses back into the living room, then opened up both the Coke and the rum. I let the smell of rum linger in my nose before I filled the glasses half full with Bacardi. I put Coke in my glass and Aaron’s, but Brody waved it away. With my first small sip, the rum tickled the top of my mouth, then began it’s trip through my bloodstream.
I sat down next to Brody, deep in thought. This was a once-a-week thing, I told myself. I suspected Brody would get drunk every night if he could. If every day was like today, I thought, then I would second the rum-and-Coke solution. Except neither of us could afford it.
“Happy Friday!” Brody shouted, then raised his glass into the air. Aaron just grunted. He seemed distracted and detached.
“What’s happy about it?” I grumbled as I thought how I’d rather have my lips wrapped around Whitney’s or Nicole’s lips than a glass, which I was working on emptying.
“Mick, she ain’t worth it,” Brody said, then raised his glass high again. “Here’s to best friends!”
“To friends,” Aaron said as he raised his glass. I set down my glass, pulled out my lighter, flicked it, and let the friendship flame burn.
“Mick wants to tap some ass, right?” Brody said.
“I’m trying, man, I’m trying,” I said, knowing how much I’ve practiced if and when the day should ever come. I thought right then that I’d give ten years of my life for ten minutes with Whitney, ten more days with Nicole, or to wipe away my one encounter with Roxanne.
“Seems our man Aaron is the only one getting himself some,” Brody said as he slapped Aaron’s knee. “Maybe one day we’ll meet her, what do you think?”
“Maybe,” Aaron shrugged as Brody reached for the bottle. While the faraway look in his eyes remained, Aaron joined the party at last as Brody poured more rum into his glass.
The conversation stopped, stalled, and fired in a hundred directions over the next hour: Brody told stories, Aaron alternated between laughing loudly and pulling at his hair silently, while I just tried to keep up. By the half time of the TV game was over, more than half the rum-and-Coke solution to any problem had vanished. During half time, we moved over to a table in the kitchen. Brody sent Aaron on a mission to find some cards so we could play poker.
Over the roar of the TV, I thought about this night as a science experiment: the effect of alcohol on adolescent males. Subject Aaron sunk even deeper into himself, like a black hole imploding. Subject Brody got louder, more aggressive, like a superfuckingnova exploding into the dark night sky. Subject Mick needed more testing, for his reactions are the most inconsistent; his energy was in flux like a comet without a clear path.
“I found the cards,” Aaron said, then tossed a deck on the table.
“Wanna play the bank, ATM?” Brody said, but I winced. I knew Brody was drunk since ATM was a behind-the-back, not an in-your-face nickname for a good friend.
“Right,” Aaron mumbled while I shot Brody a nasty look. I knew Aaron didn’t like this nickname, but he laughed anyway.
“Dude, don’t call Aaron that,” I said. Brody’s face washed out, like a wave of sobriety splashed over him. Not because he felt guilty about his words, but because he was surprised I corrected him.
“Just kidding, ATM, you know that,” Brody said. Aaron nodded, and I relaxed, while Brody shuffled the cards. Another half an hour got sucked up as we smoked, drank, and played poker. I was an even worse poker player than I was a pool player, although the problem was the same: hand-eye coordination. Although in poker, it was too much hand-eye coordination, for whenever I had a good hand, I couldn’t help but smile. I’ve tried to put on that poker face, but I’m just not wired that way. I can lie to Mom, ex-Dad, and teachers about just about anything, but once the cards get dealt, I can’t keep the hand I’m holding secret.
The poker made me feel restless, as much as Brody’s shouting and Aaron’s silence made me feel nervous. I told Brody to deal me out. I said I was going to take a piss, but truth was, I just needed to get away for a few minutes. The rum was buzzing my head and churning my stomach. I started to walk around the trailer to kill time and my dark thoughts.
I passed by the bathroom and stepped into the bedroom. Just inside the room was a crowded dresser. It was covered with makeup, overflowing ashtrays, and dusty framed photos. One picture was of a family: there was Aaron, his sister, and his mom. Aaron looked to be about nine or ten, so it’s a picture from before Aaron moved into our neighborhood. But there were two other people in the picture: an older man who looked like Aaron—it had to be his dad—and there was another guy, maybe an older brother. A brother Aaron had never mentioned; a dad that Aaron told us died when he was five. A death the three of us drank to the evening before. A death that bonded Brody and Aaron.
“Aaron, I thought your dad died when you were five?” I said as I walked back into the living room, the picture in hand. “I mean, that’s what we were remembering last night, right?”
“What?” Aaron stared at me. His eyes were blurry; maybe because Aaron spoke the least, he drank the most. “Why are you asking me about my dad?”
“Mick, what’s your problem?” Brody sounded agitated.
“Who is this?” I held up the picture, pointed to the father figure, and then put the photo in front of Aaron like a cop handling evidence. I sat back down at the table waiting for Aaron to speak.
“Look—you see—” Aaron stumbled over his words as Brody examined the picture.
“Dude, what’s going on?” Brody’s anger flashed. “We drank to his memory last night.”
Aaron was silent for a long time, filling the vacuum by filling up all of our glasses, then finally he said, “Well, he’s gone, just not by accident, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?” I followed up. I felt like some TV show detective.
“Guys, just let it alone,” Aaron said, and then shuffled the cards.
“You can’t lie to your friends, Aaron,” I said, taking time to stress each word of the sentence. “If you can’t tell your friends the truth, then you can’t tell anyone.”
“You lied about this!” Brody shouted. Aaron and Brody’s shared past losses at the hands of auto accidents bonded them, but I wondered if Aaron knew Brody’s whole story.
Aaron paused, emptied his glass, and then spoke. “He’s in Huntsville.”
“What’s that?” Brody asked. There was no breeze whipping through the trailer, but I felt a chill. I’d heard about Huntsville last year in current events class when we talked about the death penalty.
“Huntsville’s a prison in Texas,” Aaron said with a sigh. I thought the sigh sounded a little like ex-Dad’s, maybe with the same motive. Maybe Aaron was impatient with himself for lying to his best friends for the past three years.
“Huntsville,” I repeated, then motioned for the rum. The cards were on the table and all eyes were on Aaron. Aaron hated the attention, but we’d called and he had to show.
“Aaron, what the hell are you talking about?” Brody slammed his fist on the table.
“Guys, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Aaron said, eyes downcast.
“I don’t care what you want!” Brody shouted while I continued my stare. “Spill it!”
“Guys, do you know what my first real memory of my dad is?” Aaron asked, his voice cracked. “When I was like, three, he must have got some money someplace because we went in to Houston to watch Sesame Street Live, one of those stage shows. And I remember him buying us cotton candy, and buying himself beer after beer. He’s there with his kids at a Sesame Street show getting drunk. He couldn’t control himself, that’s all you need to know.”
“You lied to us,” I said. Brody nodded in approval.
Aaron took a drink, then a deep breath. He was wildly twisting his hair with his fingers. “One night, he came home stinking drunk. It must have been when he was out of work, which was most of the time. Whatever was wrong was our fault. He had this belt, this big cowboy belt.”
“Cowboy belt?” I asked.
“I was born in Texas, a place called League City, just outside of Houston,” Aaron continued. “My parents moved there from Michigan after my dad got laid off from GM. I guess he found work there for a while. Something must have happened to his job, because I remember when I was real young sleeping in the car. Then he’d get work, things would be okay for a while, then it would all fall apart again. It was like living in a house of straw.”
“Man, that’s messed up,” I muttered.
“So, when I was about eight, he’d been laid off again and just came home stinking drunk. He took that belt, with that big cowboy belt buckle, and he started on my mom. Called her a whore and a bunch of other stuff. Just beat the shit out of her, not the first time, but worse than usual. I started yelling loud.”
“Why did he do that?” I asked.
“Why do you think? He was drunk, angry, and out of control.”
“What happened?” I asked between drinks. Brody still wasn’t talking. He bounced the deck of cards forcefully in his hand, making the table shake like an earthquake.
“Well, then my older brother, Stan—he was ten—tells my dad to knock it off. Well, that just sets my dad off even more.”
“Aaron, you have an older brother?” I asked.
There was a moment of silence before Aaron replied in a whisper, “I don’t anymore.”
“Dude, I’m sorry,” I said, even though I knew nothing I could say would really matter.
“Stan told him to stop, screamed at him, and then my dad said—and I’ll never forget the words or how he said them—he slurred, ‘What are you gonna do about it?’ and then laughed. Stan was a little guy, but he did something. He tried to grab the belt out of my dad’s hand.”
Aaron took a drink. I noticed his hand was shaking as much as his voice and the table.
“It didn’t take much. He hit him once hard across the face with the belt. It was like his face exploded. I couldn’t do anything. Stan started crying and my dad is screaming for him to stop, but he can’t because he’s so scared and so hurt. My dad takes the belt and wraps it around his throat. He went limp within a minute.”
“Aaron, I’m so sorry.” I felt useless, and thirsty as I reached for the half-empty fifth.
“Stan wasn’t a big kid; so that first shot knocked him down. Then the little shit cried, rather than just taking it. He’d beat us all before but not like this. If you cried, it made him madder, so I learned not to cry. I think the tears just reminded him what he was doing, which made him feel worse, which made him hit more. Anyway, that’s what one of the counselors told us one time.”
“He didn’t come back after you?” I asked.
“He didn’t get a chance,” Aaron said. “My mom was like in shock, just kind of not moving. After he choked Stan, then he started toward my sister. She was in the corner of the room, crying, shaking, totally trapped. He was waving the belt over his head. He must have lost sight of me for a second because I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the phone off the wall.”
Brody continued to bounce the cards, while I pushed Aaron to continue. “The phone?”
“I wish now I would have grabbed a knife and rammed it into his heart. I wish I would have grabbed a pan or something and crashed it into his skull, but I was too little, too scared.”
“So you called the police?” I asked.
“I got as far as dialing 9, then 1, and then he caught me. He stared me down. Told me to put the phone down or else. He had blood all over his face, but I knew it wasn’t his blood.”
“No way,” Brody slurred. His mouth rejoined the conversation. His eyes had never left.
“He grabbed my arm, ripped it out of the socket, but I’d already pushed the last 1.” Aaron started to cry. “I heard the voice say, ‘What is your emergency?’ but not much more. My sister had jumped on my dad’s back and was trying to choke him, and then I dove at his legs. It was pretty loud, so I think the 911 people knew something was wrong. Really, really wrong.”
“Did the police come?” I asked.
“It was too late. Stan was dead and Dad was gone,” Aaron said. I noticed his fingers had pulled more twisted hair from his head. “We didn’t need police. We needed a body bag.”
“They caught him, right?” Brody chimed in.
“Yeah, and that bastard fought to the end. He wouldn’t confess to what he did. He wouldn’t admit to anything, so there was this trial, and I had to testify against my dad.”
“Were you scared?” I asked, as I flashed back on my own fear of truth telling.
“Dude, I was shitless. I remember I was wearing these gray pants and my grandmother helped me put on a tie, a red tie.” Aaron spoke clearly as if he were describing a scene before him, not behind him. “And the one lawyer, the prosecutor, asked me what happened. And I told them everything, but it was hard. A lot harder than this because my dad was like twenty feet away, sitting there staring at me, just like he did in the kitchen the night he killed my brother. I had to sit there and say the words that sent my dad to prison. I’ve never ever forgotten that.”
“And so you guys moved here?” I asked.
“After it was over, Mom moved us up here because we couldn’t live in Texas anymore. She grew up in Flint and her sister lives here. She found a job, and then met my stepdad.”
“You ever see your dad again?” Brody asked, then motioned for the rum.
“No, not once, although I hope to one day,” Aaron said. His eyes were wet with tears and terror. “But it won’t be soon because he’s on death row and his number’s coming up.”
“Then when?” Brody said, then took another rum-only drink.
“Not in this life, but in another,” Aaron said. “I’ll find his sorry ass in the fiery furnaces of hell, and then I’ll get my revenge. This time I won’t be eight. This time I won’t back away.”
We were all silent as we passed the bottle of rum around, the liter of Coke mostly untouched. The table was littered with Aaron’s hair, tears, and truth.
“Your mom should have left him,” I said, breaking the silence. “None of this would have happened, if she’d just left him.”
“And do what? A high school dropout with no job, no money, and three kids to feed. Where was she going to go?” Aaron asked.
“What about calling the police?” I asked.
“She’d done that. Nothing happened. Maybe my dad would spend the night in jail, but that was it.”
“But still.” I couldn’t find the right words, so I tipped the bottle again.
“This isn’t a spanking for spilling a glass of milk, dudes, this was a massacre. The counselor said my father by that time so hated his life that he felt trapped and needed to strike out against everything in it.” Aaron’s words were loud and clear even if his voice had started to slur.
“The bastard should have just killed himself!” Brody shouted.
“But he couldn’t,” Aaron replied.
“Why?” I asked, then took a drink straight from the bottle.
“Because he was weak, because he was a piece of shit. People who are weak get the shit that’s coming to them if you ask me,” Aaron said, then stood up. He slowly looked around the room, then tipped over the table. The cards and our glasses flew all over the floor.
“Aaron, man, relax,” Brody said. I had to hold in a laugh at the idea of Brody as the voice of calm. Brody was an F-five tornado, but Aaron’s winds were whipping up wildly. When I stood up quickly I realized that during Aaron’s story we’d all been drinking a lot. I took one more quick swig, and then set the Bacardi bottle on the floor. I started to pick up the cards, but when I bent over, the the liquid making its way down my throat didn’t have enough force to stop the heaving energy of the contents of my stomach from making its way up. I bolted from the living room, slid into the bathroom, and had perfect aim as I threw up into the toilet.
“I just heard his lung come up!” Brody shouted from the other room. It was funny, but I didn’t laugh. I was too busy trying to catch my breath and clear the remnants of vomit from around my mouth. Even as the salty spit collected in my throat, I pledged this would be my last Friday night drinking with Brody and Aaron. This wasn’t a road I wanted to stagger down again.
“You okay?” Aaron asked as I made my way back into the living room.
But before I could answer, Brody shouted, “Mick, you stupid clumsy motherfucker!”
“What did I do?” I asked. I wiped off my mouth, then saw the rum spilled on the dirty carpet, which had sucked up the stain. The bottle was now almost empty.
“You spilled it, man, it’s all gone,” Brody said as he slammed his fists into his legs.
“I’m sorry. I screwed up,” I offered. My voice was a mix of embarrassment and anger.
“What now?” Aaron asked.
“You’d better figure something out,” Brody said, then poked me hard in the shoulder with his right hand. “This is your fucking fault. You cheated me out of my drunk, dude.”
Looking into Brody’s angry eyes and Aaron’s sad face, I knew I’d better come up with a way to save the night I’d ruined. I thought for a moment, then said, “the Scarecrow.”
“What about him?” Brody’s voice was finally down to his normal loud level.
“Let’s get him to buy us something else to drink.” Even as I said it, I realized I was too drunk. But I’d screwed things up with my friends, and it was my job to make things right.
“I’m sure if we offer him a few bucks—” Aaron started to say.
But Brody cut him off. “Offer him beer instead.”
I nodded, then walked toward the kitchen and grabbed some paper towels. I soaked up the stain, trying to hide the evidence. Aaron started picking up the mess he’d made on the floor, while Brody went to the bathroom. The room was totally silent, still, and calm. After we cleaned up, we headed out toward the place where we’d seen the Scarecrow earlier.
When we got to the rundown little shack, Brody cupped his hands, winked at me, then yelled, “Come out come out wherever you are!” I faked a laugh for Brody’s sake, but what I really wanted to do was open my mouth and say, Let’s call it a night. We don’t need to do this.
“Who is it?” A voice emerged from behind the heavy growth of weeds and shrubs.
“You want some beer?” Aaron said, then took a step closer. “Mister, come talk to us.”
“We ain’t gonna hurt you,” Brody promised.
The wind kicked up as the Scarecrow emerged from behind the shrubs. From even a few feet away, I could smell the beer on his breath and the stink of the piss that stained his pants. His hat was pulled almost over his eyes; his mouth and face were covered in sores. “What do you want?” His voice was rough and tough, like the bricks that lined his hovel.
I took a step forward. “Hey, go buy us some beer and you can keep some.”
“How many?” the Scarecrow asked.
“Buy us a twelve-pack and we’ll give you two,” I told him.
“Four,” the Scarecrow responded.
“Fuck you!” Brody shouted.
“Two,” the Scarecrow said immediately.
“Get us Miller High Life, longnecks.” Brody barked out the beer order like some TV drill sergeant. The Scarecrow grunted and held out his hand. My heart sank when I saw the skin on his right hand. It was red and raw, like it had been burned. I handed the guy a twenty, then we followed him in silence for the short walk to the Big K Market. The Scarecrow went inside while we waited behind the store under the buzzing neon light and silent security camera.
“How do you think this happened to him?” I asked Brody and Aaron.
“What?” Brody replied.
“The Scarecrow, how do you think he got like this?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Brody replied. “Who cares?”
“You sound like ex-Dad,” I joked, but nobody was laughing anymore about anything.
“To fathers,” Brody said, then made a mock toast, which I didn’t join.
“To dead dads,” Aaron added. “May they rot in peace.”
“Where the fuck is he?” Brody slapped his right hand against his left bicep. “Dude, I think the Scarecrow ripped us all off. Stupid worthless drunk.”
“Stupid worthless drunk,” Aaron repeated.
I looked up at the security camera. If it had infrared sensors, the images of the three of us would be screaming, bloodred blotches of anger, impatience, and resentment. I felt a sudden urge to change the tone of the evening, which had taken a sharp turn onto a dark road.
“We’re here live with Brody Warren, former star of the Swartz Creek Dragons football team,” I said, waving Brody over to come stand next to me, then holding my hand in front of me.
Aaron cupped his hands to make a sound like the roar of a crowd. Brody waved to the security camera and pretended to sign autographs as he walked over to me.
“Brody, how do you think the team is going to do this year without you?” I asked.
“They suck,” Brody said, then laughed.
“And that’s because you’re not on the team?” I said.
“Totally,” Brody replied. “Most of the guys are losers, cheaters, and whiners.”
“To what do you attribute your success?” I asked.
“Rum, Coke, and good friends,” Brody said, then slapped me hard on the back.
I laughed, then looked straight into the camera. “Anyone you want to say hello to?”
“Here’s a shout-out to my brothers and my mom,” Brody shouted, then raised his fingers in the “we’re number one” pose. “I’m going to Disney World!”
“It has been a pleasure interviewing you,” I said as I noticed the Scarecrow walking toward us slowly. It looked like the bag he was carrying weighed more than he did.
“The pleasure has been all yours,” Brody said, then we all laughed.
“Here,” the Scarecrow said, handing me the change: the bills and coins mixed with the receipt, which I stuffed in my pocket. He then handed Brody a brown bag containing a twelve-pack of Miller High Life longnecks.
“Deal.” Brody took out two of the beers and handed them to the Scarecrow.
“Thanks,” the Scarecrow mumbled, then headed back into the woods.
None of us felt like walking back to Aaron’s sister’s, so we found a small clearing not too far from the Big K. We sat on the ground, and Brody opened the brown bag, pulling out a beer for each of us. I wasn’t really paying much attention as Aaron started asking Brody questions about football, no doubt so we wouldn’t talk about his lies anymore. I sipped my beer in the cool of the evening, holding it in my left hand. I put my right hand in my pocket and pulled out the money the Scarecrow had handed back to me. I felt the beer freeze the back of my throat when I did something ex-Dad put in my DNA: I counted the change.
“He shortchanged me,” I mumbled to no one in particular.
“What?” Brody looked up from his beer, which he’d emptied in three or four gulps.
“Never mind,” I whispered, almost trying to pretend I’d never said anything at all.
“How much?” Brody asked, his volume cranked back up.
“Nothing, just two dollars,” I answered, reluctantly.
“Motherfucker!” Brody shouted, then hurled the bottle against a tree.
The sound of the shattering glass seemed to awaken Aaron, who’d been lost in High Life and his own thoughts. “That’s what drunks do,” he said.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said, looking at the ground, toward the spot where Brody’s feet had been. But he was gone: running into the woods. I shouted, “Brody, where are you going?”
But I knew: my heart raced as fast as my feet as I grabbed the bag with the beer, then chased after Brody, with Aaron just a step behind me.
“I’m sick of being cheated and ripped off!” Brody shouted over his shoulder. By the time we caught up with him, he was standing outside the Scarecrow’s makeshift house.
“Let it go,” I said, trying to catch my breath and calm Brody down, failing at both.
“Like that stupid bitch Mrs. Kirby!” Brody shouted. His long brown hair seemed wilder, his eyes unfocused, and his anger unhinged. “Everybody thinks they can take from me.”
“Brody, let’s go,” I said as I reached out my right hand to pull him back.
“Fuck you!” Brody shouted at me, then knocked my hand away. I reached out again to grab his arm, but he pushed hard against my chest. I stumbled back while he charged inside the makeshift house with us in hot pursuit. “You cheated us, you motherfucker!”
The Scarecrow was leaning against the pile of bricks, slurping down one of the beers. “I didn’t—” the Scarecrow started.
But Brody became a monster with no ears, just a mouth. “Don’t sit there in your fucking filth and fucking lie to me!” he shouted, casting his large shadow over the Scarecrow.
“I’m not.” The Scarecrow seemed stuck, so Brody kicked him into gear. While he didn’t kick as hard as he’d kicked Garrett at the party, Brody landed his size twelve shoe into the Scarecrow’s shoulder. The Scarecrow didn’t move or make a sound; he just spat on the ground.
“I’m fucking sick and tired of being cheated by everyone!” Brody shouted.
The Scarecrow rubbed his shoulder, then let out a small, garbled laugh. “What are you gonna do about it?” Even if the words were slightly slurred, the meaning behind them was not.
In the time it takes to blink an eye or ruin a life, Aaron reached behind the Scarecrow and grabbed one of the red bricks. There was a quick look of surprise on his face that vanished the second Aaron smashed the brick into his skull. Even a dull thud can produce an echo.
“Drunken loser!” Aaron shouted as he brought the brick down again on the Scarecrow’s head. The Scarecrow fell back, blood spurting from the top of his head. He didn’t scream, he just moaned. Rather than reaching for his injured head, he reached for his leg. From his sock, he pulled out a short knife, which he used to slice open Aaron’s ankle.
“Aaron, stop it,” I finally said, breaking through the paralysis of my throat, but Aaron didn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t hear me. The Scarecrow held the knife in front of him pointing it at Aaron again, but Brody kicked him from behind. When he fell backward, Aaron landed another hard shot with the brick, this time in the throat. There was a strangled drowning sound as the Scarecrow spat up blood, most of which landed on Aaron’s face. Brody started to stomp on the Scarecrow’s prone body like he was on fire and Brody was trying to extinguish the flames.
Every sense was working overtime. I heard his last gasps in between the heavy breathing of Brody and Aaron. I heard the smack of shoe and brick on his body. As Aaron and Brody continued their savagery, I was paralyzed in the middle of a nightmare with no way to wake up.
· · ·
Brody’s eyes were almost as red as the blood staining Aaron’s gray hoodie and sock. Aaron crawled off the Scarecrow, wrapped himself up like a ball on the ground next to the dead body, and started to rock back and forth. I couldn’t tell if he was crying, laughing, or a little bit of both. I sat with my head between my legs, ready to throw up again. For a long while no one spoke through the death-filled air, until Aaron finally mumbled, “Mick, this is your fault.”
“My fault,” I said, trying to look anywhere except at the bloody heap next to Aaron.
“If you wouldn’t have spilled the rum,” Aaron said, his head between his knees as his hand applied pressure to his ankle.
“Shut up!” Brody screamed. “We’re not going to do this!”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Point fingers,” Brody said, then acted out the motion. “That doesn’t help anything.”
“What are we going to do?” Aaron mumbled.
“How the fuck should I know?” Brody shouted. “Mick, you need to figure this out.”
I crawled over to the body, the dead body, for there was no pulse or breath. “I don’t know, I guess we call the police and—” I started.
But Brody cut me off. “No police.”
“But Aaron and you killed a—”
“Aaron didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything, and you didn’t do anything,” Brody said as he reached over to the brown bag. He pulled out a beer, then rolled one over to me and one to Aaron. Brody took a drink, but this time there was no toast. “No one finds out.”
“Besides, he was dead already,” Aaron said. The beer remained unopened next to him. “You think if anybody cared about him, he’d be living like this? He’s nothing. Trust me, we did him and anyone that knew him a favor, putting everyone out of their misery.”
“Who would know if he was living or dead?” Brody asked me, almost in a whisper.
“We would,” I said as I stared at the pile of rags, blood, bone, flesh, and skin.
“Dude, this doesn’t leave here,” Brody announced. I knew if he was close enough, he’d seal the deal with a slap of the arm or poke to the chest. “Nobody talks, right?”
I shook my head to agree, but doubt drowned me. “But what if?”
“What if what?” Aaron asked.
“What happens when somebody finds the body—I mean—what then?” I asked.
“Then they can’t.” Brody let his words hang there and waited for someone to finish.
“Can’t what?” Aaron asked. When Brody didn’t answer, I knew it was my place.
“Find the body,” I said as Brody nodded in agreement. I finally realized what my role in this friendship was. I was supposed to be the smart one, the guy with the answers. Shit, were we in trouble.
I got up, took a last sip of beer, but left the bottle half full. Then I walked over to the prone bloody body of the Scarecrow and poured the beer on his bloody bashed-in face. I found some dry newspaper and stuffed it under his body. Finally, I pulled the bone white lighter from my pocket. I offered it first to Aaron, then to Brody.
“You do it,” Brody said, while staring me down. “It is your turn.”
I listened to the sounds of Brody’s and Aaron’s footsteps as they shuffled back outside, leaving me alone with the stinking dead body and a foul deed in front of me. I heard crickets chirp and an airplane pass overhead. I imagined miles away the Dragons scoring a touchdown, sending the crowd into a frenzy of applause. Miles away women were shopping, laughing, and spending money as Mom turned on a smile to sell them more clothes they didn’t need. Miles away men were drinking and leering as Aaron’s sister shook her ass and took their money. I pretended I heard these sounds of the living, so I could pretend that I was miles away from the death in front of me. Pretended to hear laughter rather than the sound of the thumb on my shaking right hand flicking the lighter. Pretended to hear anything other than the almost silent crackling of the fire starting to burn the Scarecrow’s body and send his soul up to heaven and my soul into a free fall straight to hell.
· · ·
We returned quickly to Aaron’s sister’s trailer. Aaron found some men’s clothes for us to change into. Aaron bandaged the cut on his ankle, and we wrapped our beer and bloodstained clothes in trash bags—including Brody’s shoes—then threw them in the Dumpster at the other end of the trailer park. When we left via the front entrance of WindGate, I thought I saw smoke through the trees and tasted ash sticking to the roof of my mouth.
As we walked quickly back toward school, the conversation was minimal: I wanted to talk about “it” but Brody’s eyes screamed at me to be quiet, while Aaron looked like he was lost.
We arrived in the school parking lot just a few silent minutes before the buses started to pull up. A wave of red washed over us as the Dragon diehards climbed off the buses into waiting cars. I didn’t see Whitney, Shelby, or Nicole, and I was amazed at how little they mattered to me. All I cared about was when and if the smell of smoke would ever leave my body.
Brody left us for a moment and walked across the lot. He chatted briefly with someone, ending the conversation with a slap on the back. When he returned, he said, “We lost twenty-seven to ten.”
I wanted to say, Brody, why are you telling me this? I never cared about football, but now, even less so. Brody, what are we going to do? This isn’t a football game. Aaron, this isn’t a video game. This is real. But instead, I just gave him a puzzled look. We didn’t talk again until Aaron’s mother arrived. We quickly piled in so she wouldn’t notice our ill-fitting clothes.
In the car, the conversation was minimal except for Brody speaking about the game. He repeated the score five times, due to anxiety or alcohol, maybe both. The short drive drove me nearly insane. It reminded me of that Poe story Mrs. Kirby had us read: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” about a guy who killed somebody, then buried him under his floor. He confessed to the crime because he was driven insane by thinking he heard the beating of the dead guy’s heart under the floor. Locked in the car, Aaron’s mom had to hear my heart beating faster than normal. She had to see the sweat, even in my coatless state, dripping down my brow. She had to smell the smoke, not of cigarettes, but of something much worse.
Aaron’s mother dropped me off, and Brody got out with me. She said good night and seemed to be waiting for a response. But before I could say anything, my words and thoughts were both drowned out by the sound of the only thing louder than the beating of my heart: the sound of a siren.
· · ·
Brody waited until the scream of the siren faded before he spoke. “Relax, Mick,” he said as he tamped his last cigarette up and down on his hand, before putting it behind his right ear.
“Brody, we—” I started, but stopped since there was nothing to say or think. Instead, I wondered why I’d never noticed all the cracks in the driveway. I focused on the cracks as they broke off into separate paths, then formed more cracks: all of them small, all of them connected.
“Look, we’ve done this before,” Brody said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Done stupid stuff, but we don’t snitch on each other,” Brody reminded me. “Like today with that paper. I could’ve said you wrote it, but I didn’t. We’ve covered for Aaron, you’ve covered for me. Friends cover for each other. We can do this.”
“Do what?”
“Not tell about this,” Brody almost whispered. “Those sirens, that’s probably a fire truck. There won’t be anything left of the Scarecrow for them to find, and we can forget it happened.”
“But on TV—” I started, thinking about every TV crime show I’d ever witnessed.
Brody laughed, but my mouth couldn’t move in an upward direction. “This is fucking Swartz Creek, Mick, not New York or Vegas. I doubt there’s a CSI Flint.”
“I guess.”
“Nobody’s going to know,” Brody said in the tone of a teacher announcing a test. Brody moved from the driveway and sat on the lawn. He leaned back, resting on his elbows, and looked up into the night sky.
“But what if?” I asked.
“Besides, it was just the Scarecrow,” Brody said, then grunted. Like he was unsure of the spin to put on the words. “I mean, Aaron was right. It’s not like anybody’s going to care.”
I shrugged, but wanted to say, Dude, he’s still a person. Or rather, he was a person.
“Don’t be scared,” Brody told me. I wasn’t sure if it was a suggestion or an order.
“I’m not,” I said, another step down what seemed like an endless road of lies.
“You can keep a secret; I know that,” Brody said, then kind of half smiled. I scratched my head, then joined Brody sitting on the lawn, looking at the infinite sky rather than the equally infinite connection of cracks in the dull gray driveway. The siren had long vanished; the crickets in the air and cars out on the street took over again as the soundtrack for the late evening.
“Weird about Aaron’s dad, huh?” Brody mumbled, like he didn’t want to be heard.
I cracked my knuckles as my answer, knowing there was not much left to say. I was surprised by Aaron’s story, but then not by his actions or Brody’s. For us all, the Scarecrow was the last straw. I thought I knew Aaron; I was wrong. I thought I knew what Brody was capable of, but I was also wrong. The only question remaining as I looked up at the almost full moon, which looked like a cue ball shining white in the sky, was, What was I capable of doing?
Brody broke into my thoughts with a stiff slap to my leg. “I gotta get home.”
I got up and dusted the grass stains off my borrowed pants.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Brody reminded me, and I nodded in agreement. I was too tired, too stressed, and too everything to say anything, or even think of things I wanted to say.
“Light me up!” Brody shouted as he pulled his last cigarette from behind his ear.
I buried my hand in my pocket and my heart raced. Every nerve cell in my body tingled; I wanted to scream and stomp my feet. Instead, I took a deep breath, feeling only acid in my lungs. I quickly turned my back on Brody and acted like I didn’t hear him. I put my head down and sprinted into the house, leaving him alone in the darkness with his unlit smoke. There’s no light because there’s no lighter. The bone white lighter with my fingerprints all over it was on the ground next to the charred bones and melted skin of the Scarecrow.