Brewster (15 page)

I watched him push a small wall of shit down a groove like a twisting road. “Smells like shit,” he said.

“No way.”

“Yeah, some things you just can’t explain.”

The lawn mower coughed once, twice, then caught and rose.

“Keep thinking it’s gonna get hot again,” I said.

“Kiss it goodbye.”

He banged his boot against the side of the steps, snapped off the end of the twig against the floorboard and went back to work. “Time to start thinkin’ cold, your feet frozen, dick like an olive—”

“Not my dick.”

“Olive
pit
.”

He banged the boot. “There. Think I got it.”

“So he’s back on full-time?”

“Who?”

“Your old man.”

“Guess so.”

“So that’s good, right?”

“I don’t know. Probably not gonna be takin’ me out to the ballgame as much, no more father and son talks—”

“—camping trips—”

“—playin’ chess, hangin’ out together … gonna be a bitch.”

T
HE BURNING SMELL
of the leaves, that cool dirt smell before you threw them in—sometimes it was like you could smell the sun. It smelled like stone, or wind.

I can see us there, Ray still moving a little slow—raking, piling, burning. I can see Wilma sleeping on the walk, the shadow of the porch cutting her across the shoulder—already pregnant, though we didn’t know it then.

When you’re used to something, it’s hard to see it another way.

I could have asked him straight out. I didn’t. I didn’t want to embarrass him, I think.

I
DIDN
’
T GO
over to Ray’s house much on the weekends, so it’s a coincidence I was even there. I’d stopped coming by since we’d looked through his dad’s stuff from the war. The few times I ran into Mr. Cappicciano now he’d act hurt that I didn’t come around anymore. I’d been busy, I’d say—between school, track. He’d kid around with me, ask me about my parents, about school, what kind of car we were driving now. “Nice of you to grace us with your presence,” he’d say, winking, then turn back to the TV.

I’d come by that day because I thought we could go to Bob’s, or maybe grab a game of pool now that Ray had fixed things up at O’Reilly’s. A windy day, small white clouds chasing themselves across the sky, leaves half-gone. I was restless—I’d been writing a paper on the First Amendment, figured I pretty much had it. So I grabbed my jacket and walked over.

They were already there—the cruiser parked by the curb as usual. I jumped up on the porch. “Better things to do,” I heard one of the regulars say.

I’d knocked on the door before I realized it wasn’t them.

They were standing in the living room, Mr. Cappicciano in a sleeveless t-shirt and pajama pants leaning against the case with the beer steins. I’d never seen these cops before. There were two, an older one with eyes like a cat’s just before it goes to sleep or nails you, and a younger guy who looked like he’d had rocks for breakfast, with quick rabbity muscles in his cheeks. It wasn’t a social call: they had their whole thing on—uniforms, sticks, guns, the whole bit.

“So who’s this?” said the older one, turning to me.

“Friend a’ Ray’s,” Mr. Cappicciano said. He had his arms folded across his chest, the apple with the knife wrapped across the muscle like a flag in the wind.

“What’s your name, son?”

I told him.

“You a friend of his son’s?”

“Just said that,” Mr. Cappicciano said.

The cop looked at him.

I nodded.

He turned to Mr. Cappicciano. “Sir, could you ask your son to come down here, please?”

“What for?”

“We’d like to talk to him.”

“What’s he done?”

“Don’t know he’s done anything yet.”

“Why do you want to talk to him, then?”

The cop smiled to himself.

“Ray? Come down here,” Mr. Cappicciano yelled.

Ray paused when he saw the cops, then came down the rest of the way. He still looked pretty bad.

“Your name Ray Cappicciano?” the cop asked.

“That’s right.”

“Ray, I’m Officer Mayo, how you doin’?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look so fine.”

Ray shrugged.

“Where’d you get that is what we’re askin’,” the younger cop said.

“Some guys from Carmel,” Ray said. “I don’t know their names.” He didn’t look at me.

“Some guys from Carmel,” the older cop said.

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t know their names.”

“That’s right.”

“You do that a lot, am I right?”

Ray shrugged.

“You get along with your dad, here?”

“Sure, you know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure.”

The cop turned to me. “Your friend get along with his dad, would you say?”

“Sure,” I said.

The cop looked at them for a while. “Alright,” he said.

“Can I go?” Ray said.

“Yeah. You—stick around,” he said to me. “Hey,” he said when Ray was halfway up the stairs, “I hear about any more fights we’re gonna have to talk again, you understand what I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah,” Ray said, and went up the stairs.

The cop stood there a while, tapping a pen on a pad, and again I was reminded of a cat, its eyes half-closed, tail twitching.

“I’m gonna give you some advice, though I don’t know why,” he said to Mr. Cappicciano. “Talk to your kid—I don’t want to have to come out here again.” He nodded toward the stairs. “Kid goes to school lookin’ like that, people are gonna jump to conclusions.”

“None of their fuckin’ business.”

“People like me.”

Mr. Cappicciano stared at him.

The cop smiled, except it wasn’t a smile. “Somethin’ I just say offend you?”

Mr. Cappicciano looked at me for a second, then shook his head.

“I’m sayin’ reel in your kid—it looks bad.” He turned to me. “Mosher, right? All right, why don’t we step outside for a few minutes, get some fresh air?”

“He got nothin’ to do with this,” Mr. Cappicciano said.

The cop shook his head, turned around. “You know why God gave us shoulders? So you can only get your head up your ass so far. Don’t push it.”

Mr. Cappicciano’s face had gone tight like somebody was pulling it from behind.

I looked at the cop. The cat had woken up. “What’s the matter, Cappicciano—miss the good old days? What’s it like not bein’ a cop anymore?”

I glanced over at the younger one. He was hunched slightly forward, watching them, his hand near his stick.

“Nothin’ to say?”

Mr. Cappicciano stared at him. You could see the skull under his skin.

“No? Nothin’? Let me explain somethin’ to you, ’case you had any doubts. Far as I’m concerned, ex is out—I don’t give a shit
how
many friends you got.”

“You can’t—”

“I can’t? What country you livin’ in?” He grinned and tapped the badge on his chest three times. “I can pretty much do whatever the fuck I want.” He paused. “But you know that.”

T
HEY’D JUST PULLED AWAY
when Ray came out of the house. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Everything OK?”

“Didn’t feel like stickin’ around to find out. Fuck, it’s cold.”

We slowed down after we’d turned the corner.

“Where we goin’?” I said.

He stopped, turned his back to the wind, lit a cigarette.

“I don’t know. You have practice today?”

“What’re you—my coach now?”

“Sure, if I have to.” He looked at me, not smiling. “What?”

“Nothin’. What?”

“Look, I’m not gonna let you fuck this up. I’m serious.”

“Stop—”

“This is your year—you know that.”

“Knock it off.”

“You’re gonna take that Belcher kid apart.”

“C’mon—”

“C’mon what? What all the time?”

“Just—stop, OK? This guy’s four seconds off the state record.”

“So what?”

“So I don’t want to talk about it, OK?”

“Fine.”

We’d started walking again.

“We’re all gonna do somethin’ big this year. Karen’s gonna get into some great fuckin’ college, you’re gonna be goddamn state champ …”

“What about Frank?”

“Frank’s gonna stop playin’ with himself …”

“Think?”

“I don’t know—might be askin’ too much.”

“So what’re you gonna do?”

“Me? I’m gonna get the fuck outta here, that’s what I’m gonna do. Be like my whatcha call it, life’s work.” He smiled. “I can see it. Fifty years from now, some guy chippin’ it outta the rock: ‘Ray Cappicciano, RIP: Got the fuck outta Brewster.’ ”

“It’s not all bad,” I said.

“Think?—Everything good is leavin’.”

We walked across the elementary school parking lot, empty for the weekend, then along the classrooms. It was quiet out of the wind. Ray stopped to look at the windows, which were covered with brown turkeys and stick figures with black hats.

“Remember doin’ this shit?” he said.

“Sure.”

“That smell?”

“I remember the crayons.”

“Crayons, paints—all that shit. Those buckets of white paste they made us use …”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Weird. I mean, that was us, too.” He shook his head. “Nobody ever tells you stuff.”

“Maybe they don’t know.”

He walked to the next window like it was a museum. “Check out this dog, man—it’s like a potato with teeth.”

I walked over. “I like the tail,” I said.

He was still looking at the dog. “Listen, do me a favor—don’t tell Karen about the thing today, OK? With my old man. I don’t want to be puttin’ a lot of ideas in her head.”

“You sure? I mean, nothin’ happened.”

“No, I know. Still.”

He moved over to another window.

“What’d you tell ’em, anyway?”

“The cops? I don’t know, I told ’em what you told ’em.”

He nodded slowly, like it was something to get his mind around. “OK,” he said, and we headed off toward the Borden Bridge.

H
E
’
D JUMPED
from the weedy bank to a tire stuck in the mud when I asked him why he hadn’t told the cops about Danbury. He didn’t miss a beat. Wasn’t legit. If he told them about it, they’d close it down.

Made sense, I said.

He jumped back to the shore and we pushed up through the bushes decorated with trash from the spring floods, holding our arms up like boxers covering up. It was almost dark.

I
’VE NEVER LIKED PARTIES,
never been good in groups. All those voices talking at the same time. I came to a party early once and there were only eight or ten people there and it was fine but as each new person came in you had to talk a little louder, and because you were talking louder everybody else had to and soon everybody was yelling and you could hardly hear a thing.

That fall was like that—all these people screaming about college applications and the League of Nations and “
Señor Mosher, hágame el favor de darme su libro
,” and me in the middle not really hearing any of it. By the time Thanksgiving came around, the only thing I would have been thankful for was a little peace.

I didn’t find any. Now and then a voice, a line, would float up out of the racket and hang in the air where you could see it. That November I’d talked to my parents—we still ate dinner most nights, it wasn’t always crazy—and told them I was thinking about traveling around with some friends the next summer. My father wanted to know where we’d be going, how we’d pay for it.

“With that girl you’re always with?” my mother said.

“She’s not my girl,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” she said.

T
HAT WAS ONE.
That “suit yourself” rose above the noise. It wasn’t much, but it made me furious and weak like a kick in the balls and I played it over and over in my head, turning it into speed, into pain, into fifteen 220s one after the other like a chain saw coming down, pushing Kennedy through the curves, making him earn it, forcing him to bring it out because he was the only one who could make me hurt anymore.

We trained together now, just the two of us. Moore would do what he could for the first few, then drop back to the second group. We didn’t talk much. We were all in. I’d think about it, plan for it. I’d go in hungry. If I ate anything after twelve o’clock, it would end up on the infield grass.

I never knew what drove him. Never asked. I accepted the beatings he gave me on that cinder track—and they
were
beatings, leaving me retching, staggering around—like a younger brother who’s proud to be noticed and
knows
he’s growing. He didn’t think he could take Balger alone, he told me one night as we jogged back past the science classrooms because the track had turned into a quarter mile of mud—the bastard was nationally ranked now. But we could beat North Salem
and
Balger in the two-mile relay.

How did he figure? I said. We were both working hard, talking between breaths. “Moore, OK,” I said, “but—we don’t have—anybody for fourth.”

“Kid—mustache,” he said.

“You’re kidding—Peter?”

“He’s comin’ up,” he said. “Their fourth is slow, too—Peter’s close—two, three seconds.”

We were approaching the line. Falvo stood to the side in the lab room doorway holding a stopwatch and a clipboard.

“Anyway doesn’t matter—if we spot ’em a few seconds. Ready?—I know what you can do.”

“Suit yourself” and “I know what you can do.” There were others that came through the blur of tests and papers, the ten-milers along the roads at dusk with the sweat freezing the ends of my hair into mats and some moron driving alongside offering me a ride because it looked like I was in a hurry, har-har, but those two stood out because they fed and fought each other in my skull: “Suit yourself” because I wasn’t worth talking to, because I was pathetic, because I wasn’t even man enough to admit what I felt, because no matter what I did I would never be what he could have been. “I know what you can do” because maybe there
was
something I could do, because it was my only answer, because if he’d lived I’d still be faster than him.

I’d think about it when I ran, feed on that mix of shame and rage, draw on it like a straw. I’d run him down like a wounded deer. I’d run him down as easily as sleeping. I’d chase him till his heart burst like a popped balloon and kids sucked bubbles out of the rags and popped those too, and I’d do it, gliding away like air, just to see the look on her face.

What a perfect noise those two made in my head. Even now it’s amazing to think I managed to do anything at all those few months, to answer questions about Ezra Pound’s black branch and the nitrogen cycle and what kind of corrective cookie I’d recommend for those fallen arches as if all the time a storm wasn’t raging in my skull. Only Ray and Karen understood, Karen because she could hear what you were saying even when you weren’t, because she could see exactly how fucked up you were and care for you anyway, Ray because he had his own storm, twice as black and twice as loud, and recognized the look.

It’s why we were friends. I’d disappeared the day my brother died. He dreamed of nothing more.