The Monster Variations (22 page)

Mel hitched up his bag; he had a bus to catch. For a strange moment he imagined that he was Willie Van Allen, hitching up his own bag with just one arm and leaving his parents forever. Mel looked up at a tall tree as he passed and thought he saw tree house boards still nailed to faraway limbs.

Sometimes it’s okay to run
, he whispered to Mrs. Van Allen as he shambled his way past the house, but the words swept up and away, became snow.

T
hump thump thump—

When the gasoline stopped gushing and the nozzle hiccupped and shuddered inside the tank, both James and Reggie blinked. The air, so clear there for a moment, was again marred with the clatter from the garage, the ticking of the other pumps, and the rasp of truck tires, newly heavy with petroleum, peeling from the dirty cement. The two little boys again had escaped from their father and were weaving circles around the grown-ups, around James and Reggie, around everything.

“Yeah,” answered James. “I remember almost everything.”

Reggie lifted the nozzle from the tank and returned it to its rusted housing in a motion so practiced James found it nearly miraculous. Reggie was not just bigger, he was better, his wounds deeper, his willpower stronger. He no longer seemed like a troubled kid heading for the same prison cell as his father, nor would he drink away his years in the same bar where his mother wiped up after local farmhands. There had been violence in Reggie’s past, but there had been just enough goodness, too, and the result was the man that now stood before James, almost fully formed.

“You always had a pretty good memory, I guess,” said Reggie, looking toward the garage as if itching to get back in there and put his hands to metal. James thought of the months following Willie’s death, before Reggie moved away, and how on occasion the two of them would still laugh together about things: Mel Herman, Reggie’s mom, even the divorce that split up James’s parents. It felt good to laugh at those things, and then ignore them because they meant so little—or so much that they were best forgotten. Then even ignoring these things became a chore, and each time the two boys saw each other they would have to grin bigger and laugh harder than before. Eventually they began avoiding each other, pretending not to notice as they passed on different sides of the same street. There was an expanding world to explore, and their exchanges just took too much energy. By
the time of their last interaction in the boys’ room at the end of ninth grade, they barely recognized one another, and could only hazily recall the time when they saved each other’s lives almost daily. Thinking of it now filled James with so much shame he felt like running, and when he looked at his car packed with college supplies he realized that was exactly what he was doing.

It had to stop; he had done too much running already. He wasn’t like his parents, he couldn’t be, and only Reggie had the power to wrestle him back to the kind of boy who took on any fight that crossed his path without regard to pain. Like Reggie, he was now bigger, but was he any better? He thought about all of his high school accomplishments, packed neatly in boxes back at home, and decided that, no, he was no better than he had been at twelve. In fact, perhaps his one chance at greatness had slipped away the same moment he gave up Reggie’s Monster, the only unique thing he had ever possessed. All at once he felt the Monster’s absence as deeply as someone else would feel a missing arm, and he wanted it back, all of it—the Monster, Reggie, Willie, everything.

Reggie looked again at the garage. Anxiety engulfed James. The fight was slipping away yet again, he could feel it. Everyone had their scars, most of all Reggie, and though James had tried to wound himself by shrugging off his current life as carelessly as possible, it had not worked. He was still clean and untouched. In a moment, Reggie would walk away, and selfishly he would take the fight with him.

“Hit me,” James said.

Reggie wiped his nose, squinted.

James spoke again. “I said hit me.”

A smile crept over Reggie’s face, but it broke halfway. A thrill of excitement spread through James’s chest: for once the advantage was his.

“Why would I want to do that?” Reggie asked slowly. The half grin remained but his eyes were cautious and alight.

James saw pictures: green bruises, hanging scabs, bloody teeth. “You have to,” he said. “This is our last chance.”

The smile, if that’s what it was, drained from Reggie’s face. He looked down at his arms, saw the nicks of blood sparkling through clotted grease. He raised his hands and gazed at both sides, as if shocked by how large they were, how threatening. He too seemed to realize it: the time was now, the characters were present, and the setting was right—encroached on all sides by wrecked cars, the gas station made a suitable substitute for the junkyard. James took in air, kept it. He tensed his muscles, set his jaw for violence, and readied himself to retaliate.

The dangerous things that were Reggie’s hands glided back down to his sides. James suspected trickery; he inhaled even more deeply; black spots danced before his eyes. But there was no cruelty in Reggie’s face, only patience.

“You’re not going to prison, James,” he said. “Things are going to be okay.”

James’s shoulders—they were shaking. He could not help it. There was liquid in his eyes. He blinked and some of it fell. He was eighteen, not twelve, but once again fought back tears. He was back at Greg Johnson’s funeral, Willie Van Allen’s wake, straining to keep himself together and finding the needed strength from the one person who always stood with him: Reggie.

Strength was still the offer and James, his vision a blur, reached out and took it. It turned out to be Reggie’s hand, and he was shaking it, and the sweat mixed with his own, palm to palm, blood brothers once more.

And then they were apart and it was over. Words were still coming, but it was only conversation, the niceties of two grown-ups who ran into each other at the local filling station.

“You still seeing that girl? Betty, Betsy? What was her name?”

“No,” James said, sniffing, wiping at his eyes. “You?”

Reggie nodded, happy. “Addie. I wish you could meet her. We’re going to get a place. I’m going to open my own garage. Next year, or the one after that. Addie, she wants to have a baby.”

“Already?”

“Man, what’s already? I don’t have time to wait for already. Already is now.” Reggie laughed. “My mom sees it a little different, of course. But that’s old people for you. They always think everything is their fault.”

“It is.”

“No, it’s us,” said Reggie, gently. “We did this to us.”

The two little boys roared through, dodging past James, thumping Reggie’s hip, leaping over the front bumper of the car and speeding onward, all feet. James and Reggie watched the boys take the corner of the station, their hands scratching like they wanted to murder each other—believable if not for the laughter.

“I
am
going to visit Willie,” Reggie said. “I mean it.”

“Okay,” said James.

“Just remind me where he is.”

“Near the back.” James rubbed his hands together, watched Reggie’s grime disappear into his flesh. It hurt to speak of Willie and look at Reggie, and to wonder if the blood the three friends had shared still beat in rhythm somewhere inside their estranged bodies. “Maybe three rows from the back. His gravestone is pretty small. But you’ll find it.”

In that last moment, the shouts of the two little boys still dying in his ears, James wondered which of the two of them—he or Reggie—would live to see the other buried, and if he, whoever he was, would need to ask around to locate the plot. For the first time, James saw an upside to being tied to Reggie Fielder, an advantage every bit as powerful as being tied to Willie Van Allen. Being connected in such a way was like being given a rare glimpse of the future—you knew, in part, where you were headed. Weight that had been upon James’s shoulders for longer than he could remember slid away.

Reggie slapped the pump. “Look, this tank’s on me.” He felt around for his rag, saw that it still lay atop James’s
car, and so wiped his hands on his overalls, nodding slowly and backing away. “You’ll do good, James. Don’t you worry.”

Then there was a shout—”Fielder!”—from inside the garage, and Reggie’s face softened with relief. He grinned at James, winked, and sprinted. Without turning around or saying goodbye, Reggie Fielder hurried into the garage and melted into darkness.

James opened the car door, sat down, and steadied his hands on the wheel. The fight was not over, but at least it was his to win or lose on his own. He stared at the graduation tassel, which hung motionless. Maybe Reggie was right. Maybe he
could
do good.

He turned the key. The car, filled with gasoline from the most important gas station in the world, roared to life. James put the vehicle into gear and pulled forward, making sure the two little boys were out of the way. He looked into his rearview mirror, finally not noticing the tassel, and watched Reggie’s stained cloth slide down the car’s back window and fall away.

James brought the car around. The tires settled as they found the smoother surface of the highway. He felt a smile touch his face. He knew where he was headed.