The Bleeding Season (8 page)

“But it’s funny how even after all these years you find yourself wondering just how well you really know anyone.  Hell, we’ve all been tight since we were kids—been through a lot together—but we still have secrets, don’t we?
All
of us.  None of us are ever exactly, precisely what we claim to be, are we?  We’re one way with some people, another way with other people, maybe another way still when we’re all alone.  That’s what it boils down to, fellas.  At night, when you’re lying there in bed looking at the ceiling, remembering the day, thinking back through things you did and what lies ahead, when it’s just you and whatever god you pray to in the dark…that’s when all the masks are peeled away and it’s just you.  Just you, and whoever…or
what
ever you are.”

There was a garbled sound, and then the hiss returned.

“Is that it?” I asked.

Rick shook his head in the negative and held his hand up like a traffic cop signaling cars to stop.  More breathing followed a series of clicking sounds; Bernard had stopped recording then begun again.  When he resumed speaking his voice sounded the same as before: distant and almost artificial.  “You guys ever wonder why we were friends?  I mean
really
wonder.  The last few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, going back through the past, remembering good times and bad—all of it—as much of it as I can, anyway.  When I was a little kid, maybe five or six, my mother told me that in this life we’re lucky if we have one or two true friends, people we can really count on and who stand by us through thick and thin.  That’s if we’re
lucky
.”  Bernard gave a quiet sarcastic laugh.  “Isn’t it strange the way we stuck together all these years?  All of us are from working-class families, all of us townies but…but that’s where it ends, really, wouldn’t you say?  Even in school it made people wonder.  Guys like us—so different, one from the other—might’ve been friends when we were little but surely once high school hit we’d go our separate ways and settle into the appropriate cliques.  But we didn’t.   In a lot of ways we got closer, didn’t we?  In a sense, anyway.  Rick the jock, Donald the bookworm honor student, Alan the rebel without a cause, Tommy the all-things-to-all-people charismatic leader…and then, me.  The joke, the dork.”  Bernard’s voice cracked, a clicking sound followed; then silence.

I glanced at the windows on the far wall.  A light snow had begun to fall.  It seemed too late in the season for more snow, but just like Bernard’s distorted voice speaking to us as if from the beyond, there it was.

“Christ,” Donald said softly, “how much more of this is there?”

“He sounds like he’s in a tomb,” I heard myself say.

“I think he recorded it down in that basement,” Rick said as the hiss on the tape gave way to another loud click.  “That’s why he sounds so far away, those cement walls are distorting his voice.”

Bernard continued, calmer now, “I’m not stupid, I know how people saw me.  Except for you guys, anyway.  We were all well practiced at that, disregarding each other’s faults, no matter how hideous.  There’s always been a bond, a common ground between us.  Rick, you and me were only children; we both knew what it was like, the pros and cons of being the only one.  No pressure there, huh?”  Heavy breathing, a rustling sound.  “And Donald, good old Donny.  You and me, we know what it is to be different, don’t we?  We know what it’s like to be left out, made fun of…terrorized.  Isolation, that’s what we know, isn’t it Donny.  Self-imposed or not, isolation’s an old friend too.”

I glanced at them quickly while their names were mentioned.  Neither made eye contact.

“Alan, we knew what it was like not to have a father around,” Bernard said next.  “How it was to grow up with a single mother, what it is to love and be close to your mother and all the shit people give you for that.  Momma’s boys, you and me…and proud of it, right?”  He laughed lightly, and this time it sounded somewhat genuine.  “And then I think about Tommy and I wonder…I wonder what it was we shared.  It took me a long time, going over it again and again…and then it came to me.  Tommy was like all of us in one way or another.  If you took the best parts of each one of us and put them together into a single person, you had Tommy.”

Donald, who was staring at the floor, nodded slightly.  Rick had turned his back on us and was standing in front of the window, gazing out at the snow.  But he knew Bernard was right too—Tommy had been the best of us.

“I always felt bad for you, Alan, because you were there when it happened.  After he died a day didn’t go by when I didn’t think about staying after school that day, and how if I hadn’t, I’d have been with you guys.  Maybe I would’ve been the first one off the bus that day.  Maybe I’d have been lying in the street instead of him.  Would’ve made more sense…”

My throat cinched and I struggled to control my emotion.  I had been two steps behind Tommy that day, and the same thoughts had crossed my mind ever since.  How easily it could’ve been me instead.  How perhaps it should have been.

“But the one thing we all shared, the one thing we all knew,” Bernard said through a lengthy sigh, “was pain.  We all know pain don’t we fellas, and the rage that comes with it.  Yeah, we know rage too.  We know the rage of never amounting to what we should have,
could
 have been.  Falling short, that’s been our specialty.”

Donald pushed himself to his feet and began to pace, arms folded across his narrow chest.

“Rick, you could’ve been a pro football player.  It’s all you talked about from the time we were little, and you had it, you
had
it, man.  But the rage got you.  You almost beat that poor bastard to death over a parking space.  For what, to impress some fucking girl you were dating at the time?  The guy was in a coma for three days, for Christ’s sake.  A
coma
, Rick.  For a parking space.  I remember going to visit you in prison.  We’d all pile into the car and make the drive to Walpole, everybody dead quiet—God those were the longest trips because nobody said a word the whole way up and the whole way back.  And when I went away one of the things I was running from was having to go see you in that fucking hole.  You were always so strong—so much stronger than I was—I couldn’t stand seeing you broken, locked away in that place.

“And look at you now, man.  Fifteen minutes of rage in a parking lot and your whole life went to shit.  Is that fair?  Is it?  Is that fucking fair?”  Bernard hesitated, apparently cognizant that the volume of his voice had increased considerably.   When he continued, his tone had returned to one softer and more controlled.  “Are you happy, Rick?  Life turn out the way you hoped?  A bouncer at a nightclub, alone, still chasing chicks like a high school kid, hanging around your apartment staring at those old trophies.  Jesus Christ, man, a far cry from the NFL, huh?”

Donald looked at me through bloodshot eyes.  “This is absurd, why—”

“Be quiet,” Rick snapped, his back still facing us.

“I don’t think any of us need to hear this kind of—”

“Shut the fuck up and listen, Donny.”  Rick turned slowly, looked at us over his shoulder with dark eyes.  “We’ve never had to hear anything so much.”

“And then there’s Donald,” Bernard said flatly.  “The king of underachievement.  Fucking royalty in that department, huh, Donny?”

The nearly gleeful tone in Bernard’s voice surprised me.  I’d never known him to revel in someone else’s pain, particularly if that someone was a friend.  Donald’s expression had shifted from discomfort to near-frenzy.  He glared at me, and I tried to convey a look that told him it was all right, that everything would be OK.

“I always wondered who you thought you were punishing,” Bernard went on, his lifeless voice cutting the silence.  “You’re the smartest guy I’ve ever known, Donny, and one of the most unhappy.  Remember when we were kids and you’d talk about moving away when we grew up?  You used to talk about going to Paris and Berlin and London—all these places that seemed so impossibly far away back then.  You wanted to teach, remember?  You had it all planned out.  A teaching job in some little European village, where it was quiet and you could sit and read and be at peace, that’s the dream you talked about.  The dream you should’ve realized but never did, because the demons got in the way, then the booze fucked everything up.  But we all know the booze wasn’t the real problem, don’t we, Donny?”

Donald’s eyes had grown moist.  “He has no right,” he whispered, “no right to do this to us.”

“Imagine a good Catholic boy turning up faggot.”

“Jesus,” I groaned.

The pain on Donald’s face was nearly tangible.  He’d heard the slurs and hatred for years, just never from Bernard.

“You are what you are, Donny,” Bernard said.  “You just couldn’t seem to go with it, to be what you are and be OK with it.  Eventually, it’ll probably kill you.  Nobody to love but that goddamn bottle, hiding from yourself and from all the shit everyone always gave you.   So you hit a bar now and then, find someone to share a few hours with—maybe a weekend—then it’s back to work at that office, wasting away and typing up someone else’s thoughts, not even able to make the ten-minute drive home without stopping at the package store first.
That’s
how bad it is, Donny.  Most people would give anything for your brains, and you tossed them aside like garbage. You met a guy once, some secret lover you had, but it didn’t work out like you thought, like you hoped, like you needed it to.  You were in love, you told me so, but he was just experimenting, right?  Just pretending, just drunk, just
anything
but queer.   And you were still hurt when you got to college.  You brought your bottle with you when it all went to shit, and you couldn’t shake it, couldn’t cope, so you walked away from school like some whipped puppy and you’ve been pining for him ever since, living like some goddamn drunken monk or something.  I always thought you were better than all that, I always thought you’d be the one who’d make it out, who’d really be something.  We all knew what the deal was, man, you never had to make any big announcements, and when you did you weren’t telling us anything we didn’t already know.  We accepted you, man, shit even Rick did.  For all the crap he talks and all the arguing between you two, he always stood up for you.  Besides, you’re not so different from the rest of us, not really.  Not when you get right down to the bare fucking bone.  You’re lonely…and angry.  Rage, man, always the rage.  Always there to remind us how unfair life is, how when we open our arms it kicks us in the teeth every fucking time.”  

The tape clicked, and Bernard’s voice was silenced.

Donald sank slowly back onto the couch like a deflating balloon, and Rick braced himself against the window casing, his eyes still trained on the falling flakes of snow.

“Turn it off,” Donald said softly.  “You don’t have to listen, Alan.”

But I didn’t turn it off, and neither did anyone else.  Instead, another click signaled the monologue was about to continue.  I settled deeper into the chair, felt my bowels quiver and the beginnings of perspiration seep through my palms.

“Alan,” Bernard said fondly, “you didn’t think I’d forget about you, did you?  How could I, you and I were friends first, remember?  Do you, do you remember the first day we met?  I do.  We were seven, and it was just a few days before Halloween.  My mother and I had just moved into the neighborhood and I didn’t know anyone.  I was playing on the front lawn in a new costume I’d gotten—a tiger costume—do you remember?  Great costume, man, head to toe, built-in feet, the works.  I was playing, and you were riding your bike.  You stopped to say hello, and I was surprised how friendly you were, how you just talked to me and seemed to want to be my friend.  You never even mentioned my glasses, or how thick they were, or how skinny I was, how much shorter I was than most kids our age—none of it.  You just told me your name and pointed up the street at your house and said that’s where you lived.  Then you told me my costume was cool and you had to be a ghost again for the second year in a row because your mom couldn’t afford a good costume.  Plus, she’d cut up a perfectly good sheet making the eyeholes so there was nothing left to do with it except leave it a costume or shred it for rags.”

I was stunned that he had remembered such detail.  I looked to the floor, my memories of that afternoon as clear and bright as the day it happened.

“Then the two Berringer twins showed up on their bikes, came to a screeching stop right in front of the driveway, like they came out of nowhere, scared the hell out of me.  And I knew by the look on your face that they were trouble.  Those little motherfuckers, Christ I hated them, terrorizing the whole neighborhood, always picking on kids younger than them.  They were thirteen; we were seven.  Jackie and Johnny Berringer.  Cocksuckers.  I remember you told me to go in my house, but I didn’t get it and just stood there.  Then they started making fun of me, calling me all kinds of names because I had that costume on.  I was so scared, and I kept hoping my mother would hear them and come outside, but she never did.  You told me to go inside again, then the twins got off their bikes and started pushing you, telling you to mind your own business and that I was a baby for dressing like that.  Do you remember, Alan?”

I felt myself nod, as if somehow he could see me.

“Jackie grabbed me and pushed me down,” Bernard said, his voice shaking.  “I started to cry—shit I
was
 a baby then and they were a lot older than us but…but then all of a sudden you went wild and started attacking them.”  Bernard’s tone changed and it suddenly sounded like he was stifling laughter.  “You weren’t a hell of a lot bigger than I was physically, and…Christ, they wailed the piss out of you that day, right there in my front yard.  But you just kept getting up.  They’d hit you and down you’d go; lip all busted up, nose bleeding.  But you kept getting up, and you’d come back swinging.  I tried to help but they pushed me down again and tore my costume and…I was crying and screaming for my mother, and you were lying in the driveway all bloody but on your way back for more…then the Berringer twins took off.  I guess they were afraid my mother would hear all the screaming.  They didn’t know yet that she drank too much and usually slept in the afternoons.  I never forgot that, Alan.  You didn’t even know me, but you defended me because you knew those two little sick fuckers were going to beat somebody up, and you didn’t want it to be me.  Nobody had ever done anything like that for me.  Nobody.”