Slot Machine (17 page)

I
WOKE UP THE
next morning and went bleary-eyed through my routine. Moaned and groaned. Stretched until something like non-Gumby human motion was possible. Lumbered out to do my run.

I slowed down. The naked eye probably could not tell, but I slowed down. Then I stopped, which was obvious. I didn’t have to run. I was no longer a football player or a baseball player or a wrestler. I was, once again, a mere sloth. In fact I was beneath sloth—I was a golfer. I went back inside and slept another hour in my running clothes.

“Coming?” Frank asked, kicking my bed as he rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. His voice was hoarse, his hair standing way up and all over like cotton candy.

“Ya, I’m coming,” I said. “It’s not like I’m here sorting through invitations, wondering which party to go to.”

I sat up slowly and looked all around at the empty bunks and the last of the guys heading off to their Sectors. I’d outslept everybody, even Frankie. Breakfast was over already. “Will there be snacks?” I asked.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” he grogged. “I have to get outside. They’ll have stuff; just don’t talk about food to me now.”

“Oh, what to wear, what to wear,” I said into my sliver of a locker as Frank coughed and hacked and possibly upchucked in the background.

I laughed. First a little, then a lot. Frank heaved louder and I laughed harder. Not at him. I wasn’t happy that he was hurting. It was just that, with that soundtrack playing for me as I clothes shopped, I realized how ridiculous this all was. Golf. Golfing with Obie.
Dressing
for golfing with Obie.

Frankie had been quiet for a while, until I came out the door. Bent over a rock, he looked at me, then started heaving all over again.

“What?” I asked, looking over my own ensemble. “Too much?”

I had on some of my “good” clothes that I had packed in case—I don’t know, in case there was a dance or something, I guess. Pale yellow, wide-band polyester fat-man Sansabelt semi-dressy shorts that came down to just above the knee. White sandals, tan socks. And a screaming orange lifeguard T-shirt that I could not resist borrowing off of Thor’s bed even though it was too tight and fit my belly like shrink-wrap. And his evergreen Green Bay Packers football hat that was really a baseball hat.

“You cannot come,” Frank grunted through heaves. “This is the thanks I get for trying to hel—
Uuuuuuggghhgh. Bluaaaaaaahhhhhggggghhhh
.”

“It’s the orange and the tan together, then, huh? Is that the problem?”

“El,” he said, wiping his mouth on the hem of his T-shirt, “if you don’t go get that costume off, I’m going to throw up all over it.”

I shook my head and folded my arms. “Nope. Sorry. I’m a golfer and this is what golfers look like. You invited me, so let’s get moving.”

He didn’t make a sound, hardly even breathed. He just sat there in a heap on the ground staring at me, then began rubbing his eyes again. He was helpless to do anything about me.

“Help me up,” he begged, sticking out his hand. When he was on his feet, he looked me over once more. “Fine. But you’re on your own. Whatever they do to you, you asked for it.”

“Can’t be any worse than what they did to you,” I said, walking ahead of him.

“
I
just had a lot of fun, that’s all.”

“Well then, I just hope whatever they do to me, it isn’t any fun.”

“Look,” somebody yelled as soon as we made our appearance over the hill. “Franko brought his own caddy. It’s a chimp.”

“Jesus,” Obie said, smacking me on the chest. “You look like somethin’ I puked up this mornin’.”

They all
YUK-YUK-YUK
laughed.

“Oh no,” I interrupted, “not if it was the same stuff Frankie puked up this morning. See, I’m yellow and orange, and Frank’s puke was mostly brown and red.”

They all thought that was even funnier than my outfit. Except Frankie, who turned on me. “Don’t do it to me, Elvin.” He grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me close to him, put his eyeballs almost up against my eyeballs, so his rancid breath mingled with my breath. “Not this morning,” he said. “And not in front of these people. It’ll be too much.” He let go of my shirt when I shut completely up and lost the wiseguy part of my smile.

“Yo, Franko,” Obie said, clapping him on the back. “Bet you could use one of these, after last night.” He pulled a dripping cold yellow can of beer out of his golf bag. It was not yet nine-thirty
A.M.

Obie held it right under Frankie’s nose. I could see his eyes water. Which made my eyes water. His lips tightened. He produced instant sweat, on his lip, his brow, down along his sideburn areas. His skin turned the canary color of my shorts as Obie leered, continued to hold the beer there, and breathed his own probably wonderful breath in Frankie’s face. He was holding on like a tiger, but Frankie wasn’t going to make it through this, not another ten seconds.

“Give me that,” I said, snatching the beer right out of Obie’s hand. At first he looked like he was going to clock me, even took a step toward me as his buddies
oooohhh
ed at him to do it. But quick as I could, I ripped the top of the beer open, tipped it up, and started chugging.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa,” they started chanting, for me. Just like in frat-party movies. I watched Obie out of the corner of my eye, to make sure this was working. It was. He was watching me as if I were coming up on the rail at the Kentucky Derby with all his money on my nose.

Glug-glug-glug...
slam. I did it. Spiked the can in the dirt, and let rip with a burp that could have brought black bears down out of the hills to mate with me.

They loved me. Frank loved me best, though.

“Glad you came,” he whispered, touching me lightly on the back. He looked better already. He was renewed.

“Get two more of those bad boys over here, will you?” he roared. “Jeez, we’re thirsty guys, you know. Right, El? What, do they think they’re playing with
kids
here?”

The beers arrived before I even had a chance to gag. With them came a slap on the back and a bag of golf clubs to schlep. Blindly I toddled after the pack, shaky and afraid.

“Now you’re going the right way, El,” Frank said.

“Am I?” I asked, looking all over the place desperately, without any idea what the right way was.

“Drink up, boys,” Obie commanded from the front of the pack. “And get those clubs up here, goddammit.”

“Drink up,” Frank said, clapping his can against mine.

“Jesus, Frank,” I said. “What time is it?”

“What time do you want it to be?” he asked, talking and laughing and drinking all at once so that the beer ran out of both corners of his mouth.

They wouldn’t let me golf until I finished that beer. So I remained a caddy through the first and second and third holes. Then on the fourth tee I finished the beer and didn’t
want
to golf anymore. I just wanted to sit down on the grass.

“Come on, Elvin,” Frankie said, tugging me up by the shirt. “You can’t sit there—you have to carry the bags.”

By now we were both lugging around two whole sets of clubs belonging to the O’s.

“No way,” I said. “I’m sitting.”

“You can’t sit.”

“Fine,” I said, and lay down.

Frank rushed away from me, so as not to be tainted by the connection. I got up on my elbows and watched as he put the bags down and teed up.
Whack
.

I couldn’t believe it. He was great. It sounded like the snap of a thick healthy tree branch breaking when he hit that ball. It sailed straight and long, thirty yards past the next-best drive. Golf. It was about the only thing Frank and his dad did together all the time.

“Nice shot, Franko,” Obie said, punching Frank on the shoulder. “Now get those bags, will ya?”

The O’s all loped along toward the fifth hole, unburdened by their own clubs. Unburdened by anything else, either.

“Come on, Elvin, get it going,” Frankie said.

“This sucks worse than Football Sector.”

“It does not,” he said. “And it’ll get a lot more fun later on, trust me. But for now, do your job. Privilege has to be earned, you know.”

“No it doesn’t, stupid. That’s why they call it a privilege, because you don’t do shit to get it. You just, you know, get it.”

Frank was getting frustrated with me. “El, if they reach the next tee without their clubs... Come on. Please?” he asked anxiously as the O’s left us behind.

“No. I quit.” I fell back again. The dew on the grass felt awfully good on the back of my neck.

“You can’t quit.”

“Ha.” It was my most supremely confident laugh. It was my
only
confident laugh. “Oh yes I can. There are many many things I cannot do. But quit? Quit I can, with the best of them. I quit football in the middle of the day, when everybody said it couldn’t be done. I quit baseball so fast it made their helmets spin. Hell, I quit wrestling when I wasn’t even
trying
to quit. It’s frightening, the quitting powers I possess. Why, if they only had a Quitting Sector here, I’d be home free. I’d be the captain. I’d be the coach—”

“Well then do it for me. If you quit now, they’ll probably make me carry all four bags.”

I sat up to look at him, preparing something wiseguy to say to him. But when I saw his big stupid wet eyes, he looked soft and weak. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t Frank at all. He wasn’t that way, ever, soft and weak. He wasn’t that way, and he wasn’t supposed to be.

“You quit too, then.”

“Nope,” he said, and gave up, started hoisting all four bags on his shoulders. He looked like a little tiny boy under them.

“All right, all right,” I said, and took my share. We double-timed it to the fifth hole. “But why not?” I finally asked, just before we got there. “You don’t need this.”

“Yes I do,” he said softly. “I’m almost there. I’m almost made.”

No matter how many times he said it, no matter how hard he tried, Frankie couldn’t quite make me see the magic of his arrangement. But what was clear to me was that he did see it. So I went along.

“Here you go, boys,” Okie said, shoving two more beers in our hands.

The thought made me woozy. “Thank you anyway,” I said, handing it back. “Got any Gatorade?”

“Don’t be a wuss,” Okie said, snarling and smiling at the same time.

“Just take it, Elvin,” Frank whispered.

Okie monitored us, to make sure we didn’t waste any of his expensive, imported New Jersey beer. The rest of them were watching us too. So I sipped.

Frankie didn’t sip. He gulped. “What’s the occasion?” he asked. “You guys don’t usually have brew in the daytime.”

They didn’t usually, and they didn’t now, either. They were spectators, I realized. Frank and I were the show.

“Nothin’ special,” Obie called. “Headin’ into the last week, we just thought it was time you advanced to the next level.”

“Thanks,” Frank said with a puzzled look. Then they all looked at me.

I had two full beers and a sip in my belly already. That was about one and a half more than I’d ever had in there at one time before. I was sweating. I was sleepy. My stomach was a little fluttery and dangerously empty of food. But it was up there in my head too. And I decided that two beers was not the worst feeling I ever had.

I drank down the third beer.

Three beers was the worst feeling I ever had.

We were on the road, halfway to the sixth tee, when I began unraveling. First I dropped one of the two golf bags. The strap slowly slid down my shoulder, down my arm, onto the ground. I was aware of it, felt it happening, but couldn’t seem to react to it. And when it finally dropped, I left it. I kept walking, looked down at it once, kept walking, and never even considered stooping to pick it up.

Ten yards along, Frankie said, “Hey. Hey, Elvin. Go get that.”

I turned to look at him and shook my head no. Then I let the second bag fall.

“Cut that out,” he said in that now-familiar desperate whisper. Too late. We were noticed.

“What the hell’s goin’ on?” Odie hollered. “Get my damn clubs.”

“Go,” Frank said.

I did not reply, so Frank hooked his bags over my shoulders and went to claim mine. That satisfied the O’s, so they resumed walking. As soon as they’d turned away, and before Frank reached the fallen clubs, I vomited. Loudly.

No, no one rushed to my aid. No one brought me a towel, or a drink of water. They booed. The O’s simply all stood in a line as if the national anthem were playing, and they booed me while I puked.

“Clear him out of here, Frankie,” Obie commanded. “And he was never here, Frank. Make sure of it. It didn’t happen to him here.”

Frank stood over me patiently, shielding me from the O’s by standing between us. He waited until I was good and empty, then helped me to my feet, putting my arm over his shoulder. He didn’t say anything until we were off the golf course, across the parking lot, and standing near the entrance to the administration building that housed the nurse’s station. He removed his hand from around my waist, checked me out to see that I was steady on my own, then started walking backward away from me.

“I’m sorry, Elvin,” he said, walking away slowly.

And as he said it, I wanted to cry. I felt even sorrier for him, watching him crawl back for more.

There are some things a guy just shouldn’t have to see.

So this is how they get you. They got me good. “No, Thor, this couldn’t be right.”

“They don’t make mistakes when they hand down assignments. And even when they do make mistakes, they don’t. If you know what I mean. So there you go, Friar.”

Religion Sector. A.k.a. The Calling. This was what happened when they couldn’t mold you into one of the preferred manly slots. And try as they might, they found me unmoldable. I retained my shape, such as it was.

“Okay, Thor, let’s work on this one, huh? I’ve got no calling. None. God has never called to me personally, and if he did, frankly, I wouldn’t answer. So this is a big fat mistake.”

“Well, Elvin, this Sector is for more than just the guys who might want to go into the priesthood or brotherhood. There’s also the opposite.”

“Meaning?”