Seven Deadly Pleasures (22 page)

The Skinners, Kyle as player, Dad as coach, had won the Westville Central Championship two of the last four years, once with the nine-year-olds and once with the elevens. Mr. Skinner was a town fixture at the edge of the diamond, coaching third base in his clam-digger shorts, black socks, Converse All Stars, gray sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped off, and NASCAR cap turned backward. He had a beer gut hanging way over the belt, big arms with curly hair all over the biceps, and a thick scar running from his collar bone to the base of his left ear. His hair was thinning, but he wore bushy sideburns to the jaw line. He had what looked a bit too big to be a mole and a bit too leathery to be a birthmark in the form of a long brown oval along one cheek, and his eyes were the coldest pieces of flint you had ever seen.

Some guys are book smart and some guys work around the campfire in other ways. Mr. Skinner never got past the tenth grade, but he was certainly no dummy. And he didn't like losing. Up until this year, I had always been on bad teams that my mother loved, made up of nice boys (for the most part) playing their best with volunteer coaches encouraging the successes and soothing the failures. When I was ten, Mr. Solomon actually threw us a pool party for not coming in last place, for God's sake.

This year I was ranked sixty-first in a draft of one hundred and thirteen boys and was Mr. Skinner's seventh-round pick. (I know, because Kyle showed me the draft sheet. He came in second by the way, one behind Ray Bradbeir, a big boy at a buck ninety who could catch, pitch, and regularly hit a ball two hundred and seventy feet in the air). It was the toughest two months of my life. This was not about fun, or learning, or even winning. It was about the absolute thrill of the kill, or on the other side, the horror of being utterly demoralized.

Skinner went outside the league rules and had us practicing back in early March, on the vacant lot behind the old paper branch. We did soft toss with thin metal poles and multi-colored golf Wiffle balls. Mr. Skinner would throw up three at a time and call a color. If you didn't get at least eight out of ten, you had to sprint to the edge of the quarry and back. I did a lot of sprints. He hit grounders at you as hard as he could, and if you shied away from knocking the ball down even on the goofy hops, you did pushups. I did a lot of pushups. When the season started, it was quickly determined that I was no more than a below average hitter, and really susceptible to off-speed pitches. Unfortunately, you saw a lot of curves and change-ups at thirteen, and it was common for Mr. Skinner to shout at me down the base line,
"C'mon, Raybeck! You're stepping in the bucket and your shoulder's flying open! This ain't girly softball! Keee-rist, I seen a better swing on a playground!"
I was the cause of his ejection for kicking over a bucket of balls in the dugout when, in the fourth inning against the Renegades, I came in on a fly ball to center field before realizing it was over my head. Still, he was the hardest on Kyle.

In our third contest, Kyle check swung a looping line drive to the second baseman to end an inning. Mr. Skinner made him go off by the porta-pottys in the parking lot and take five hundred full swings before coming back to the dugout. The next time Kyle was up, he cracked the game-winning double to left center. He joined in the celebration by the pitcher's mound where we did that hop-and-tap-each-other-on-the-head thing, took off his helmet, walked by his old man and said,

"Fuck you, asshole."

His dad looked away and let it stand. It was at that moment that Kyle Skinner became my idol. He came up beside me in the dugout and started packing his gear.

"Nice," I said. He clapped me on the shoulder.

"Thanks, Bozo."

It was then we also started becoming friends. Our team won almost every regular-season game with Kyle batting third, playing shortstop, pitching every other game, and breaking a township record by hitting .827. I ran a meager .223 batting average and tried my best to shag every fly ball that I could on defense. It always amazed me that my mom didn't complain about Mr. Skinner's hat-throwing, dirt-kicking, scolding, and taunting, but I believe she thought it was some rite of passage. Or maybe he reminded her of her father. Or maybe she was actually perceptive this time, not
mom
perceptive as in predicting who would fail at life because of their lack of being
verbal
or
being in touch with their feelings,
but real-life perceptive enough to see that in a very practical way complaining to this guy was, first, useless, and second, detrimental to my playing time.

I struck out looking in the title game. Last ups for us, two outs, bases had been loaded, Kyle on deck. I was still standing in the batter's box with my head down when the crowd dispersed. Mr. Skinner walked up to me, put his hands on his knees, his face up close, and said through his teeth,

"You cost me a championship, son."

I let the head of my bat dip to the dirt and I leaned on the knob. Mom wasn't even there because she had her "Divorced Ladies Let's-Share-Our-Inner-Issues Meeting" at the junior college on Fridays. A tear ran down my nose and I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Kyle.

"It was a foot outside, Jimmy," he said. "You didn't cost us nothing."

It was then that we became
best
friends. It was then I realized that Kyle was the only one who really had to deal with Mr. Skinner full time. My service under the monster's watch was not only temporary, but completed. It became the unspoken rule that me and Kyle would always hang out far away from their house over in the Common. I only wished I didn't feel so vulnerable to his meanness, even now, long after the season was over.

I sat back against the tread and kicked a bit at the dirt.

"So, what are the bent nails for?"

Golden question. Jackpot. Kyle was glowing.

He brought the box to head level and gave it a shake. The nails clacked inside and he moved to the sound in a sarcastic rendition of the "Do-Si-Do" we learned in gym class two winters ago. His head was sort of sideways, one eye regarding me in a sly sort of observation. He was doing a circular motion with the box now like the Good & Plenty choo-choo boy on TV. He shuffled past me. He stopped. He pulled up the box top, drew out a nail, and tossed it into the middle of the dirt road that cut through the job site.

He turned back with raised eyebrows. I was sorry to disappoint.

"What are you doing?" I said.

He took out a second nail and flipped it to the road from behind his back. He grabbed another, lifted his leg, and chucked it up from beneath. That particular one landed with its sharp point angled straight to the sky.

I shot off the tread.

"You can't do that!" I looked back to the Route 79 overpass that spanned the horizon to my right. "If someone takes a wrong turn off the highway you know they'll be trucking, shit, they're gonna run over those nails and pop a tire!"

Kyle looked up at the sky with his arms spread out.

"By George, I think he's got it!"

The taste in my mouth was electric. Three months ago the construction men had blocked off exit 7 up on the overpass while completing the off ramp, but the job got delayed before the new extension could be finished down here. Dirt road city. The plans for pouring and paving had come to a dead halt and long since, all the road barriers up on the turnpike had been stolen or moved. It was an old joke by now, that bum steer on the overpass and everyone knew not to take the deep, unmarked turn. Everyone.

Unless they weren't from Westville.

Every now and again some goober took the exit by mistake and barreled down the ramp to the dirt road. It was a major pain too, as the rough detour stretched for five miles through the woods before hitting the outskirts of Westville Central. Bumpy ride. Slow as all hell.

Soon to be stalled out and stranded.

I looked up at the overpass and, from behind its triple guard rail, heard the cars shooting past. They couldn't see us and we couldn't see them. A double blindfold.

I pictured some huge tattooed bruiser with a ponytail tied up in a leather shank throwing open the door to his muscle car and shouting curses into the fresh swirl of raised dust. He would chase us for sure, and I didn't run so well when I was scared. He would grab us and punch in our faces. What if he had a tire iron under the seat or a hunting rifle in the trunk?

"Pick 'em up, Kyle," I said. It sounded like a command backed at least by a shred of confidence, and of that I was glad. Kyle replied by flipping another nail into the road.

"You sound like your mother." His voice rose to falsetto. "Let's talk about you and how you feel about yourself, James. Let's have a big pow-wow."

His tone went back to normal.

"Damn, Jimmy. Your ma just won't leave you be, will she? The lady has you turned pussy is all, hell, why does she have to know everything anyway? She don't even give you an allowance."

"What does that have to do with—"

"Well she don't,
does
she? Does she?"

My eyes felt suddenly hot and bloodshot.

"She gives me money."

He slapped his thigh.

"Exactly! But ya got to ask for it every time. That's how she keeps tabs on what you're going to do with it. Don't you see? Anytime you want to buy something fun she gets to shoot it down. She wants to keep her little baby-boy, don't she? She won't let you have secrets. That should be a crime or something."

He nodded at me meaningfully.

"I know you're a charity case of the apron strings, Jimmy. That's why I want to help ya. That's why I
like
ya." He held up a crooked nail. "This ain't gonna cost nothing. This here secret is gonna be a freebie."

My mouth opened and I shut it. Like always, Kyle had twisted my mother right into the crux, and though the correlation was clumsy, the effect was potent. Oh, it had everything to do with the matter when you really paused for a gander. It made you stop still. It forced you to look, to judge up your life, and to stew.

Sure, Kyle played it up real nice in front of my mother, being all charming and verbal and "forthright," making up some allergy to softly admit he "was having to wrestle with," or quietly confessing he was "working through something with his father." Oh, he knew the language all right! Ma thought she was cutting edge, while her whole deal was already cliché. And in terms of how this trickled down to me, Kyle's accusations were right on the mark. Mother made me the oddest one out and it had been so for a couple of good years now.

And since she kicked Dad out the door, the woman had turned downright sour. When I was way younger she used to sing out loud in the house all the time. She used to hum "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore," and "Puff the Magic Dragon" to me before bed, but Dad never liked it. He called it "sensitive man bullshit," and made her feel like a dumb hippie all the time. He was always telling her a thing or two, proving her wrong and making her cross. Then he'd be gone for months at a time. Dad was a traveling sales representative. He sold gourmet coffees to restaurants. Sometimes I even liked him OK when he was around, but he spent too much time moaning at Ma and practicing his pitch in front of the mirror. He was a big fake-me-out, Dad was. One second he would be sitting at the table playing the all-American father, next to be ranting about how
"Maxwell House was whoring up the industry,"
or how Hills Brothers had all the
"market share,"
or how Judith (Ma)
"had really pulled a boner this time."

In 1971 they got a divorce and he officially became "The Bastard." We moved out of Westville Central and bought a house out on Weston Road, where the plots stood acres apart from each other. Ma really cleaned his clock.

The problem is that she never stopped being cross. Her red hair went a bit gray and the dimple marks at the sides of her lips deepened around a nearly permanent scowl. All of a sudden it seemed that everything tensed up a notch and she wanted to know all I was thinking and the whole long road of what I was feeling.

She made me tired.

And kept me poor, trapped in the fold, and begging. Most of my friends were starting to get out more, like after dusk and all, but I still wasn't allowed. I had to stay home with mother so we could talk. Talk-talk, some nights she had me at the kitchen table until eight o'clock, asking about the details of my day and hanging on the words. She was lord, judge, and jury, always cramming my head full of her
interpretations.
Oh, she was a regular code-cracker all right. I always got a technicolor version of just "who I really was" at that particular moment, thank you very much.

And no allowance, lord, it was a big responsibility being the man of my family! A responsibility I was starting to resent.

Kyle pushed the box out toward me and gave it a shake.

"Go on, Jimmy. Do a nail, man."

I scooped my thumb and index finger into the box and drew out a nail. I underhanded it out to the road and felt an immediate speckle of the guilts on my face. My nail looked like a crooked finger pointing back at me in dark welcome. It was an invitation, leading me to my next step down the dark path. I looked to Kyle and he was nodding. I turned my glance back down at the road.

This was not the way I imagined I would turn out. Maybe it was fun to make crank calls and play knock-knock zoom-zoom, but this was big time. I didn't belong here, and I suddenly didn't care what Kyle said.

I took a step forward and bent to one knee so I could grab back my nail.

"Too late for that shit!" Kyle said from behind.

There was a
shhhuuuuckkk
sound followed by a flock of shadows spinning madly across the road. A shower of nails then pelted down to kick up a scatter of small, dusty clouds.

The lane was covered.

I had every intention then of picking nails from the road one by one, but I stopped. I realized I had made fists at my sides. I was not the one who dumped the whole box. It was not my idea to leave someone stranded out here with a flat, shit, I was the one who wanted to pick up my nail and get out of here!