“Go,” I said.
“Go where?”
“Like … die. But not accidentally or anything.”
Her hands stopped moving and she shot me a scorch-
ing look. I mean, I honestly felt burned.
“You’re not supposed to do that ‘asking for a friend’
thing to the friend in question.”
“I’m not talking about you,” I said.
She hung up the last item in the basket. The overalls.
Pinned them by their straps.
“Oh,” she said. “A ‘friend.’”
“Right.”
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“Got it.” She let out a big, deep sigh. As if preparing
to run a marathon she really didn’t want to start. “Okay.
Go ahead and tell me what’s so terrible about your life.”
We began to walk back toward the cabin together,
the dogs wagging all around and between us.
“My life?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I wasn’t sure I understood. But I didn’t have it in me
to disobey her.
We reached the porch, and I sat on the edge of it. The
girl dog, Vermeer, took advantage of her relative height
advantage and kissed me right on the face with her long
tongue. Neither dog had ever licked me before. I was
ridiculously flattered.
The lady sat next to me and picked up something she
had clearly been working on before the laundry project.
It was some kind of whittling. A curved knife and a thick
stick of wood that was beginning to take a shape, but I
had no idea yet what it was trying to be.
“Well,” I began. “My parents fight like cats and dogs.
And I don’t just mean they argue. They scream. They
throw things. My dad’ll try to get me to side with him just
to spite my mom. Once he crashed his fist right through
the living room drywall.”
“Better that than right through your mom.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “But then there’s my brother.
He got drafted. And I think he’s having a really hard
time over there.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Then she waited a couple of seconds.
I guess to see if I was done.
I wasn’t done.
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“And the thing is … I just … love him.” I said it as though it was some kind of revelation. Something that
had never crossed my mind before.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she said. “He’s your
brother.”
“But I never really thought enough about it until he
was gone. So now I’m worried because I think maybe I
didn’t tell him.”
“You have an address to write to him, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“So tell him.”
I just sat a minute, letting that sink in. I never an-
swered her.
“So, listen. Kid. Not to dismiss what’s bothering you,
but … these are temporary problems. Your brother’ll come
home. Your parents might not stop fighting, but you’ll
grow up and move away where you don’t have to hear it.”
“But what if he doesn’t come home?”
Her knife held still for a beat or two. No curls of
blonde wood fell onto her porch boards.
“Well, that’s a whole other ball game, kid. But there’s
a good chance he will. So you have to hang around and
find out, don’t you? You’re talking about using a perma-
nent fix on temporary problems.”
I just stared at her for a moment, and she stared back.
I wasn’t understanding her. And then, a second or two
later, I got it.
“Not me,” I said. “You thought I meant me?”
“Oh. An actual friend?”
“Didn’t you hear me say it was my friend?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t believe you.” More whittling.
Then, “What’s your friend’s story?”
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“I don’t know,” I said. “Well. I sort of know. But I
don’t know that it’s any one great big deal, like…” But
then I didn’t want to say like what. I didn’t want to make
any reference to her situation. Her great big deal. “He’s just always been sort of sad. His parents don’t say a word
to each other, and it’s just really heavy and dark and
strained in that house, and it’s getting to him. I think.
Maybe there’s more, but if so, I don’t know it.”
“So what makes you think he’s thinking about it?”
“Because he said he thinks about it.”
“Oh. That’s pretty damn clear.”
For a minute or two I watched the curls of wood, and
the shape they were leaving behind as they fell. It was
beginning to look like a monkey. I could see its long tail
curved around the inside core of the stick.
“Is that possible?” I asked. But then I didn’t know how
to be any clearer than that. I wasn’t sure how to put into
words what I thought I meant. “Like … even if nothing
huge happened?”
“Anything’s possible. Sure, a person can just be de-
pressed. Maybe his parents grew up hard and they haven’t
even begun to heal the insides of themselves. And then
yeah, sure. He can grow up hard, too. I don’t know be-
cause I don’t know him. But it’s not always about big stuff
happening to us. Not as much as people think, anyway.
Could just be his brain chemistry or a bunch of little
things adding up big.”
I sat quiet a minute.
Then I said, “So what do I do?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. Stone crazy. Like
I’d just told her I see flying monkeys or some weird vi-
sion like that.
“What?” I asked, feeling defensive.
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“Well, first of all … you obviously weren’t listening
yesterday. I told you. You can’t make somebody leave and
you can’t make them stay.”
“You said I couldn’t with you.”
She sighed. “With anybody. And another thing. You’re looking for advice on keeping a friend alive. So you go to
a person who tried suicide a few days ago and might try it
again tomorrow. Does that sound like good sense to you?”
I stood.
My face was burning as I stared down at her. Partly
because she was chastising me for not making good sense.
Partly because she’d just told me she might try it again
tomorrow.
“Okay,” I said. “Got it. I’ll go now.”
But I was only two or three steps into leaving when
she stopped me with a single word.
“Kid.”
I turned back. Waited.
“Just be a good friend to him. Might work. Might
not. But it’s really the only shot available to you.”
I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t say anything. Because
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk to her anymore. It felt
like such a minefield, everything that happened when
the lady was around. Or even sometimes when she wasn’t
around, like that moment with her daughter. When Zoe
Dinsmore was involved, things got explosive.
I just nodded.
Then I ran home.
* * *
I managed to drag Connor out to the park, but it was a
mistake. I knew I should have left well enough alone as
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soon as we got there and those two guys were there. The
ones I beat by a step or two at the track tryout. They were
on the other side, on this hilly part of the grass, but it
was a small neighborhood park, so they were closer than
I would’ve liked. They were playing tackle football with
two other guys I had seen but didn’t really know.
And they were aware of my presence. That much was
uncomfortably clear.
I had my bat along, and a couple of softballs. In case
Connor hit one of them out of the park and we never
found it. Connor wasn’t what you might call a star ath-
lete, but he did have his moments as a surprisingly good
hitter. He swung hard and missed plenty. He was just as
likely to strike out as connect with the ball. But when
he connected … man. His swing was unreal. Home run
nearly every time.
I thought it might be good for him to play at something
he was good at for a change. I didn’t think till later that
his massive hits might have had something to do with
anger boiling up.
I also hadn’t factored in the guys who were sneering
at me.
“Come on,” I said to Connor. Ignoring them. I handed
him the bat. “You’re up first. I’ll pitch you some.”
I paced off the distance I thought should represent
home base to mound.
When I turned around to face Connor, I was face
to face with those two guys. They had abandoned their
game and walked over, following me across the grass.
“Hey, Speedy Gonzales,” one of them said. The one
who’d snickered at me for not knowing how to use start-
ing blocks.
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“What?” I said, already not liking the feel of this.
Already with a bad sense of where this was headed.
“See that guy?”
“What guy?”
He pointed over to one of the boys in his four-person
football game. He had wandered closer, too, and was
standing maybe ten steps away. I didn’t know where the
fourth guy was. I didn’t see him anymore.
The guy in question raised his hand and waved at me.
Not in a friendly way. More like, “Yeah. Me.”
“What about him?” I asked, noticing that my throat
was feeling tight.
“His name is Arnie.”
“That’s nice,” I said, trying to sound casual. I don’t
think it was working.
“He used to have a spot on the track team. But now
he doesn’t. Guess why not?”
I knew why not. It was pretty obvious. The coach
had given me a spot and then dropped his slowest guy. It
wasn’t my fault that Arnie was his slowest guy. It didn’t
make me feel guilty or like I’d done something I shouldn’t
have. But that was on the inside. On the outside, I figured
I’d better come out with something better than “Who
cares?” or “Not my problem.”
“Look,” I said. “I don’t even want to be on the damn
team. It wasn’t my idea to try out. Coach made me. I’m
not even going to take the spot come fall. I’m going to
get out of it somehow.”
While I talked, he moved closer to me. Menacingly,
like he was trying to intimidate me into backing up.
Over his shoulder I saw Connor making wild point-
ing gestures. And I knew what he was trying to tell me.
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Maybe it was just really good pointing, or maybe it was
because I’d known Connor for so long, but I read him
loud and clear. There was something behind me.
My guess was that one of them was crouching down
back there, and as Snicker Boy forced me to back up, I’d
fall backward over him.
So I didn’t back up.
I stood my ground as he got closer and closer. Until
his nose was nearly touching mine. I could feel every
muscle in my body tight like a drawn bow, but I wasn’t
in a complete state of panic. Because I really didn’t think
he was going to hurt me. Trip me, make me fall down,
laugh at me. Yeah. But there were cars going by. Lots
of them. Lots of drivers who lived in this small town.
Nobody was going to get seriously hurt.
“Says you,” he said.
He seemed to be losing patience with my unwilling-
ness to play the game.
He took one step back, reached out with the palms
of both hands, and pushed me hard in the chest. I flew
backward. And, sure enough, his idiot friend was crouched
back there. I just kept falling until I was on my back in
the grass, staring up at the sky.
By the time I’d scrambled to my feet, Connor was
flying across the grass. And I do mean flying.
He hit Snicker Boy with his full weight and brought
him down, probably more with the element of surprise
than anything else. Connor fell with him, fell on top
of him. Then he raised himself to his knees and started
swinging. Snicker Boy was so caught off guard that all he
could really do was try to cover his head with his hands.
Then one of the other boys pulled Connor off the kid.
But Connor wasn’t done. Not even close.
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the head. Lefts and rights, both. Over and over.
Now, I’m not defending those guys. They were idiots.
But all they’d wanted to do was cause me to fall on my
ass, laugh at me, and then walk away. Nobody—with the
exception of Connor—had meant to escalate the thing to
this level. But, let’s face facts. You can only punch a guy
in the head just so many times before he swings back.
The guy swung back.
He connected with Connor’s jaw so hard that I heard
it from ten steps away. Connor flew backward and landed
in the grass, holding his jaw.
All four guys laughed at him.
Then they turned their backs on us and walked off
laughing. And that should have been the end of that
whole disaster.
It wasn’t.
Connor rolled over, launched to his feet, and picked
up my bat. And he went after the guys with it.
It’s times like that it pays to be really fast.
I caught him with an arm around his waist, and spun
him around, and brought him down to the grass again.
Brought us both down.
As I did, I looked around for possible assistance. Just
my luck. In that moment, there was no one going by.
I managed to wrestle the bat away from him.
I looked up to see the boys looking down on us. They
had walked part of the way back to stare. And get off one
parting shot.
“Your friend is a freak,” Snicker Boy said. “What
the hell’s wrong with him? You oughta keep that freak
&n
bsp; on a leash.”
Then they turned and walked away.
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* * *
“Is it swollen?” he asked on the walk home, turning his
jaw toward me to give me a better view. And leaning in,
as if I were half-blind. It was the third time he had asked.
“Is it starting to look bruised?”
“It’s a little swollen,” I said.
The first two times I had said no. But now it was
beginning to swell, and no amount of positive thinking
could convince me I was only imagining it. And I wasn’t
going to outright lie to him.
“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to tell my mom,”
he said.
“Maybe she won’t notice. It’s kind of dark in your
house.”
“She’s pretty good at noticing stuff.”
We walked in silence for a time. I could see his jaw
working as he ground his molars together. Maybe he was
testing it to see how much it hurt. Maybe he was just
grinding his teeth with stress.
“For me, I don’t even really care,” he said. “But my
mom worries about me. She can’t handle it when she
thinks I’m not safe.”
“Can I do anything to help you with telling her?”
“No!” he said. Shouted, actually. “No, you should go
home. It’s better if I talk to her alone.”
“Tell her it was an accident. We were playing touch
football, and you tripped and landed on a rock.”
“That’s good!” I watched his eyes change. Soften. To
something slightly less fierce than a suddenly uncaged
jungle animal. “She’ll tell me a billion times to be more
careful, but it won’t break her heart like if she thinks
somebody hit me. Yeah. Thanks. That’s good.”
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We were almost back at his house, and he stopped
dead in the middle of the sidewalk. And I knew he didn’t
want me to walk any closer with him. I have no idea how
I knew. But I knew. Sometimes, when you’re really good
friends with somebody, you just know, and they don’t
have to say much out loud.
I opened my mouth to ask him why he’d gone after
those guys the way he did.
Then I closed it again.
First of all, he’d done it for me. I hated to sound un-grateful. And, also, though I could not have formed it
into coherent words at the time, the truth was painfully
clear. Something had popped the cork on a bigger bottle
of anger than the situation warranted.