Malus Domestica (34 page)

Pete’s mom Linda sat on the stoop, hunkered over a cigarette. She was tiny and mousy with a husky radio-DJ voice and a twitchy, good-natured personality.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” she was saying to Leon. “Pete needs good friends. I’m proud of that guy, what he did with that big ol hammer. He can be kinda moody sometimes, and he swears a lot, but he’ll surprise you. He takes care of people he likes, he really does. He’s a good kid.” She had apologized profusely for Pete taking the kids to the fairgrounds, and she did it again for good measure. “I told him not to go back up there, but, you know, he does what he wants. Not that he’s a rebel, he… he’s an independent kid, yeah?”

“I understand, totally,” said Leon. “Wayne’s got a bit of a wild streak himself sometimes. He used to run with a couple of bad kids back in Chicago. I had to tell him what’s what a couple of times.”

Amanda’s dad Warren hulked over the slim, spindly Leon. Blond curls tumbled out from under his do-rag like an extra from
Sons of Anarchy.
His neat beard
was laced with white. “Really?” he asked, leaning against the wall with his fingertips in his jeans pockets.
“That
little guy?”

Leon chuckled. “Yeah, believe it or not. When his mom died, I didn’t take it so well. Got to drinkin a lot. Wayne got a little rebellious—or maybe just lonely—tried to make friends, fell in with the wrong crowd. Little bastard named Lawrence, him and a couple of his hard-head buddies. They talked him into one too many things and he got picked up skipping school. Luckily it happened to be a cop that worked with my dad, so he knew us. Brought him to me at work because it was so late there wasn’t no point takin him to class.”

❂

This was last year, give or take a few months; at Wayne’s age, time was a stretchy, malleable thing, distorted by the sagging weight of boredom. Every day was a week, every minute was an hour. The years were all a thousand days, but the sun was never up long enough.

“If you wanna be friends with
us,”
Lawrence, the tallest of them, had said. “You gotta get past Sam.” He and three other boys were standing outside a Quik-Trip, surrounded by the gray-and-brown galleon hulks of Chicago’s dour architecture.

“Get past him?” asked Wayne. “What does that—”

“Steal
somethin, dumbass.”

All three of them had several inches and a dozen pounds on him, Lawrence in a giant basketball jersey that looked like a flashy nightgown on him, the other two in huge white shirts. They had all started wearing their pants low, but Wayne never caught on. In fact, he had been wearing a T-shirt that day with
Pokémon
on it, and a pair of chinos Aunt Marcelina had given him for Christmas.

“Tch,
I don’t even know why we doin this,” said one of the other boys. Wayne never caught his name, but Lawrence had called him Casper ‘cause the shape of his head’, so that’s what Wayne used. In his own mind only, of course.

“Look at this four-eyed kid,” Casper said, pointing at him. “Got on a
Pokémon
shirt like he tryna catch monsters and shit. Hey. Imma give you one of them Pokey-balls and you go in there and throw it at Sam. Suck ‘im up,
SSSSSLLLURP!”

“SSSSSSLURP!”
The third boy’s name was Quennell. He wore a black and gold ball cap with some sports team’s logo on the front, the brim as flat as a dinner plate. He burst out laughing, almost collapsing on the sidewalk.

“That shit is so funny,” said Lawrence, grinning.

As if he’d flipped a switch, his face fell slack. Wayne found the effect terrifying, and ice-termites scurried up his arms. “Aight, nerd-boy. Time to bleed. You one of us?”

At this point, Wayne couldn’t believe he was still being tested. Lawrence and his cronies had milked him for schoolwork and test answers all year, pushing him around, teasing him with friendship—circling him socially like wolves, getting closer and closer, ingratiating themselves with smiles and backslaps, only to harry at his nerves with mean-spirited comments and shoving. Their cruelty inflicted, they would fade away again, leaving him alone and frustrated.

It was maddening torture, like some kind of idiot Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, and he was beginning to feel like they only drew him close to get him into biting range.

“Yeah,” rasped Wayne. His throat and mouth were dry, and his tongue clicked when he spoke.

“Aight then.”

Lawrence turned without further ado and pulled the Quik-Trip door open, stalking into the store.
Bing-bong.
They followed him inside in a flying-V formation and went straight to the front counter, where a middle-aged Indian stood behind a bulletproof window, packing boxes of Marlboros into the overhead display bin.

“Ay, lemme get a box em Swisher,” said Lawrence, carrying his crotch in one hand. The register area was raised up a step above the sales floor, so his chin only came up to the countertop.

Sam shook his head, making a face. “What are you, nine?”

“Eleven.” Lawrence threw his hands at Sam to emphasize his point. “Old
enough.”

Sam had the gall to laugh at him. The old man was rough, thick-faced, pox-scarred, looked like he’d been dragged through life by his ankles. “That is so cute,” he said in his dancing accent. “Get out of here with that. You ain’t hard.”

Taking this as his cue to leave, Wayne stepped away from the argument and padded deeper into the convenience store. Two aisles in were racks and racks of candy. He weaved back and forth anxiously, as if he were doing the mating dance of some tropical bird, combing the shelves with his eyes.

3 Musketeers, M&Ms (peanut, pretzel, and plain), Juicy Fruit—

“Come on,” Lawrence was saying. “My mama let me smoke em.”

“I am not your mudder.”

—Reese’s Cups, Nerds (tropical, kiwi-strawberry, and cherry-grape), Chunky Bar—

“Tch,
that’s for sure. My mama look good. You look like you been shot with a shotgun. In the face. All em holes.”

Sam sounded more proud than hurt. “These are acne scars.”

“Ugly as hell.”

—FastBreak, Whatchamacallit, Sour Ropes—

“What are you doing?” Sam asked. Wayne could hear the jingle of his keys as he fumbled for his keyring.

“Nah don’t worry bout it,” said Quennell.

“Put that down!”

Wayne picked up a pack of Skittles. At the same time, a burst of squeaking sneakers told him that someone had taken off running, and the door-chime went off.
Bing-bong.

He crept to the end of the aisle right in time to see Casper and Quennell run out the front door with boxes of canned Budweiser. Lawrence was already gone.

Unlocking the sales-counter partition, Sam came out from behind the glass window and ran for it, but stopped short on the doormat. Lawrence and Quennell were lightning-fast, even with their pants low, and there was no doubt that they were already out of the parking lot.

Sam slumped, defeated. “Goddammit.” He punched the doorframe and turned to schlep back to his place behind the counter, but noticed Wayne standing there in the candy aisle.

“YOU!”

He stormed toward Wayne, taking his
Pokémon
shirt in both hands and shaking the boy so hard he dropped the Skittles.

Wayne’s glasses slid, coming to rest on his upper lip, where they fogged under his nose. “I dint have nothin to do with that!” cried Wayne, trying to get away. His heart was a rabbit in a cage, banging hard and frantic.

“You’re one of them!” Sam told him, that beefy, scarred-up face inches from his own. “Tell me where did they go? Where are they going?”

Adrenaline surged through Wayne’s body and his eyes teared over, spilling down his face. “I don’t know, man, I swear, please—I don’t even
like
them.” Sam’s breath was noxious, like farts and pickles, and he couldn’t get away from it. “They told me I had to steal somethin if I wanted to be friends with em, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want—”

“Steal something?” demanded Sam. “Who do you think you are being? Do you think you are hard? Is that who you want to be?”

“No. …No sir.” Wayne shook his head ferociously, so hard he thought his neck would break. His glasses fell off, swinging from his ear into a display of potato chips.

Sam let go of his shirt and walked away, pacing slowly in front of the sales counter, flexing his hands and wheezing through his nose. Remembering the candy, Wayne bent over and picked it up, and fished his glasses out of the potato chips. He didn’t know what else to do, and leaving seemed like the dead wrong choice, so he stood there and watched the man fume.

“Always with the tricks and the bullshit,” said Sam. “Stealing of beer.” He pointed out the window with both hands, on the verge of a tantrum. “Is that who you want to associate with, young man? Is that the kind of friends you want? The kind that steal and crap on people?”

“No.
No!”

Wayne put on his glasses and dug in his pocket to see what kind of money he had. A rumpled dollar bill and two dimes. When he looked up, he noticed that Sam had stopped pacing.

“What are you still doing here?” asked the man. “Are you not going to run after them?”

The boy looked down at the Skittles in his hand and he armed the tears off his face with one wrist. His breath hitched as he spoke. “If you don’t run—
hup-hup-hup-hup
—you won’t have anything to run from.” Sam’s face softened as he saw the money in Wayne’s other hand. “That’s what my mama said,” he added. “‘A grown-ass man don’t run.’”

“I will tell you what.” Sam pointed at the Skittles. “If you make me a promise, you can have those for free. On the house. And you can walk out of here—when I call the cops to report the theft, I’ll say there were three children, not four.” Pointing at the camera mounted on the ceiling, he appended, “I will delete the footage also. It will be like you did not even exist.”

Wayne studied the Skittles, not really comprehending the shapes and colors through the mottle of tears in his eyes. His brain was having trouble gaining traction on reality.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Promise me,” said Sam, cupping his hands at Wayne as if he were begging for alms, “that you will not hang around with those boys anymore. Leave them alone. They are the bad news. Do you know what I say?”

Wayne nodded, staring into the saddle-leather basin of Sam’s hands.

The proprietor folded his arms and studied Wayne’s tear-streaked face for a moment.
“Do
you?”

“Y—yes. I do. Yeah.”

Sam stuck his hands in his pockets and jingled coins, and then he tossed a hand at the door. “Get out of here.”

Opening the glass partition, he was about to step back behind the counter when he paused, standing in the archway. “Remember,” Sam said, tapping his temple. “Stay away from them. They are on the wrong road. Be a good person. For your father, be a good boy.”

❂

Leon glanced at Wayne, who sat in the porch swing behind him. “That was the day my sister Marcy talked me into moving down here. Neither one of us was handling it. We had to get out of there.”

“Welp,” said Amanda’s dad, checking his watch. “I got work at four in the morning, so I’m gonna pack it in for the night. Y’all take it easy, brother.”

His heavy black biker boots clomped down the front steps. Pausing on the lawn, Warren chuckled. “I’d tell you to look after my little girl, but to be honest she’s the one that takes care of us.” Leon saluted him as he sauntered off into the velvet purple twilight.

Linda stayed behind, finishing her cigarette. “Why ain’tcha in there watchin the movie with the other kids?” she asked Wayne.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wanted to see the sunset.” He didn’t want to admit that he was still afraid to spend time in the house.

Royal colors made a masterpiece of the western sky. Linda took it all in. “Yeah, I see what you mean. They are nice down here in the south, ain’t they? The sunrises are even better.” She smiled at him. “I still remember the very first sunrise I ever saw when I got clean. My husband come and carried me home from the hospital. I sat in the parking lot of a gas station and cried my eyes out over it.”

“I did the same thing on Wayne’s birthday last month,” said Leon, yawning. “Well, I didn’t really sob, but…you know, I went through like half a box of Kleenex.”

“How long’s it been?”

“…How long’s what been?”

“Since you quit drinking.”

Leon tilted his head. “How did you know I was drinking?”

“You said so a minute ago.”

His look of surprised confusion broke into a grin. “I guess I did. Man, it’s been a long day. I need some sleep.” He sighed. “I figure a couple of months.”

“You figure?”

“I didn’t drink long enough that I feel like I need to do the anniversary thing. The coins, all that.” Leon took out his cellphone and fiddled with it. “I never did go to AA. I gave my debit card to my aunt and let her buy my groceries, so if I felt like I needed a drink I wouldn’t have the money to run out and get something.”

He stared into the sunset. “It was tough, and I still get that hook pullin my insides every now and then, but…you know what they say. One day at a time. That’s what my dad always said. He was a cop. He didn’t take no flak from nobody. I guess that’s where I get it. He did whatever he put his mind to, and damn the help.”

“Tommy’s daddy, he drank
real
hard. Drank like a fish.”

Linda took a long drag off her cigarette and ashed it into the grass.

“He got so bad he was hallucinating. A couple of years ago it got about as bad as it was gonna get. He was seein Vietnamese soldiers out in the woods and he said he was gonna shoot me so the ‘gooks’ couldn’t rape me. And he didn’t even know who
I
was. So Tommy got it into his head to save his daddy’s life. Took him to the hospital to get him clean. Stewart broke down so bad he ended up in a wheelchair and almost lost a leg from a staph infection.”

Leon winced.

“Bout gave him brain damage. He was in a coma for near two months. It’s crazy how dependent you can get on the booze…after so long, you literally can’t survive without it. Going clean will kill you. So it’s a good thing you got out of there while the gettin was good.” Linda put out her cigarette. “So is your dad still around?”