The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (126 page)

1969

Ray jerked my brother around about school until mid-August, then announced one night at the supper table that he’d help him finance one last chance. He handed a two-thousand-dollar bank check to my mother for Thomas’s and my tuition bills, due that week.

“God bless you, Ray,” Ma said and burst into tears. Ray loved that: being the big hero. The savior.

Thomas told Ray he wouldn’t regret it, honest to God. He’d learned his lesson. From now on, he was going to stay ahead of his assignments and get to bed earlier. He’d get out of his room and take walks when he was feeling nervous. He’d go to the library and study with me. In the midst of all Thomas’s suppertime resolutions, I made a silent promise of my own: he was going to make it or break it without my help. I wasn’t going to hold Thomas’s hand or walk him to the library or cover for him the next time he took out his frustrations on our typewriter.

I wasn’t going to live with him, either. Three weeks earlier, Leo and I had driven up in secret to the university housing office and asked
about the possibility of our rooming together at South Campus. Now they’d notified us that the change had gone through. Beyond that, I was planning to haul my ass up to Boston College every weekend to be with Dessa—to make sure I didn’t lose out on the best thing I had going in my whole life.

The problem was wheels. If I wanted to see my girlfriend, I couldn’t exactly pedal my bike up the Massachusetts Turnpike. Hitchhiking was cheap but unreliable. It could get crazy, too. I’d had a string of bad experiences bumming rides: a guy who said he had explosives in his trunk, a driver whose acid-head wife thought my head was on fire. There were all kinds of wackos out there waiting to pull over and give you a lift. I needed a car.

I’d managed to save almost eleven hundred dollars over the summer. Ray and I agreed that I’d add five hundred to the loan he was giving me to cover college costs. I was planning to use most of what was left to buy a secondhand clunker and some insurance. The rest was for living expenses. But now another thought kept spinning in my head: getting Dessa a diamond for Christmas. So what if I
was
only nineteen? I’d turn twenty over the holidays. How much surer could I be that she was the one? That I was the one for her? She’d said it herself: I was the only guy she felt safe with. In a recurring fantasy, I pummeled those other two jerks she’d gone out with—beat the shit out of them for having hurt her. From what I gathered, the dulcimer player was still living up in Boston; he could walk right back into Dessa’s life. Or she could meet someone new—some faceless guy I hadn’t even bothered to beat up in my daydreams. If I could buy a car for around two hundred, I reasoned,
and get a part-time job once I got to school, then I could start the engagement ring fund right away. Not that I could buy her anything like that boulder her mother wore. Not in a million years. But as well off as the Constantines were, Dessa didn’t really care about material stuff. Ever since her family had gotten back from Greece, she and her father had argued about several things. One of them was his focus on money. Another was me.

The Constantines had had me over for the big inspection the
week after they got back from Europe. It seemed weird to wear a sports jacket and tie, walk politely through the same rooms where Dessa and I had run around buck naked. Eating dinner was the worst of it: the five of us plunked down at their fancy dining room table. Dessa’s mother kept asking me questions every time my mouth was full. I spilled lamb gravy on this new tablecloth they’d just brought back from their trip. Then Dessa’s little sister, Angie, told me right there in front of everybody that I had a “nice bod.” She just came out with it. Not that Angie was that little at the time, either. Seventeen was old enough to know better. Old enough to know how to bust her big sister’s chops, too. Angie was an expert at that.

The worst part about that dinner, though, was Dessa’s old man. Every time I looked over at him, he was watching me—just chewing and staring, swallowing and staring. I half-expected him to turn off the lights and start rolling the surveillance films—replay the evidence of me screwing his daughter all over their fancy house.

The second time I saw Diogenes Constantine was at Constantine Dodge & Chrysler Motors. I had tried
not
to go there—had told Dessa it was a bad idea—but she’d insisted. “Dominick, they have two
acres
of used cars. I’m sure Daddy’ll do whatever he can for you.” When we got there, her old man greeted us coolly in his office and then palmed us off on George, his buzzardy-looking nephew—one of Dessa’s cousins who used to be in the business. George kept steering me to the thousand-dollar-plus models and rolling his eyes at every car I asked about. “I wouldn’t
sell
you that death trap,” he said about a banged-up Fairlane that was only a hundred and fifty bucks over my price range. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep nights knowing my cousin was riding around in that thing.” We ended the visit without a sale.

Down at work, I thumbtacked a notice on the bulletin board that I was looking for a car for around two hundred dollars. It was a desperation move. I’d already made the rounds at all the lots and junkyards around Three Rivers. I’d practically memorized the classifieds. Nothing.

Nothing was also what I’d done about telling Thomas that he and
I weren’t going to be roommates anymore. Before long, we’d be saying good riddance to our summer jobs and getting back to school. Thomas deserved to know.
Needed
to know. I just couldn’t make myself do it.

One morning, in the midst of all this procrastination, Thomas and I were walking to work. It was already a scorcher—killer humidity, temperatures heading for the nineties. The air wasn’t moving. Okay, I told myself, this is it. When we get to Stanley’s Market, I’ll just come out with it. Stop making it such a big deal.

But as we passed Stanley’s, it was my brother who spoke, not me. “Dominick, could you do me a big favor?” he said.

“What?”

“Could you speak to Dell? Get him to stop calling me Dickless?”

Throughout the summer, I’d remained on neutral ground with Dell, basically by doing my work, keeping my mouth shut, and being the Birdsey brother he preferred. “Look, you been putting up with his bullshit all summer,” I told Thomas. “We’ve got less than two weeks left and then Dell Weeks is ancient history. Just ignore him.”

“I’m
sick
of ignoring him,” he huffed. “How would you like to be called Dickless?”

“Then
you
tell the son of a bitch,” I said. “Put your own foot down for once. That’s exactly the point.”

“All right, fine, Dominick. Thanks for nothing.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Anytime.”

Neither of us spoke the rest of the way there.

It was customary for the guys on the various work crews to stand around in the morning and shoot the shit while Clukey and the foremen discussed the day’s jobs. Ralph and I were in the middle of an argument with a bunch of guys about whether or not Tom Seaver and Koosman could take the Mets all the way to the Series when Dell whistled through his teeth and made a “come here” gesture at me.

“Hey, Lassie, you better run,” someone joked. “Timmy’s calling you.” All the guys laughed.

“Hey, look, I don’t appreciate getting whistled at,” I told Dell, approaching him. “If you want me for something, use my name.”

Ignoring my protest, he tapped his finger against the bulletin board—my notice about the car. “I just seen this,” he said. “You still looking?”

“Yeah, I’m still looking. I been looking all over the place.”

He told me he had a ’62 Valiant parked out in his backyard that he might be interested in selling. It had been his wife’s before she got MS. It was just sitting there.

“What’s wrong with it?” I said.

Dell shrugged. “Battery’s probably dead by now. Body’s got a little rust. But the engine’s fine. Thing’s only got about sixty thousand miles on it. You put a little money into it, you’d have a cream puff.”

“How much you asking for it?” I said.

He shrugged. “I’d have to get a little more than two hundred. Why don’t you come over sometime this weekend and take a look at it. I live on Bickel Road, just past the old woolen mill. We can talk price then if you’re interested.”

“All right,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Call first, though. I’ll probably be in and out. I’m in the phone book.”

We were cutting brush at the reservoir that day—mosquitoes, wood ticks, horseflies zapping us every two seconds. Lou Clukey and his crew were there with the wood chipper, so we were all hauling ass, even Dell. The bugs and the heat and the constant rattle of the chipper had everyone riled up. Clukey and his guys took off just before noon, leaving us to finish the job.

The five of us were sitting at a picnic table, hunched over our lunches, when Dell looked up at Thomas. “Go up to the truck and get me my smokes there, will you, Dickless?” he said.

Thomas looked over at me, then at Dell. “Go to hell,” he said.

A smile crept across Dell’s face. He asked Thomas to repeat what he’d just said.

“You better not call me that anymore,” he said.

Dell put down his sandwich. Rested his chin in his hand and
stared at my brother like he was suddenly the most amusing thing in the whole world. “Call you what?”

“You know. And I mean it, too. I’m warning you.”

When I had advised Thomas that morning to stand up for himself, I hadn’t meant for him to turn it into a shootout at Dodge City. I’d meant for him to say something to Dell in private—in the truck or something. But that was always the trouble with Thomas: you’d make an assumption that he had
some
kind of instinct about how to deal with people and then he’d prove you wrong. Show you how completely clueless he was. A showdown in front of the rest of the crew was the exact wrong way to go with Dell Weeks.

“
You’re
warning
me
?” Dell laughed.

Thomas got up from the table. Just stood there, blinking.

“He’s not
warning
you,” I said. “He’s
asking
you.”

Dell held up his hand to shut me up. “Did you say you’re
warning
me, there, Dickless? What are you
warning
me against?”

Thomas pouted. His bottom lip was shaking.
De-fense, Thomas! De-fense!

“Just drop it, Dell,” Drinkwater said. “It’s too hot for this shit.”

Dell stood up. He sucked in his gut, hiked up his pants, and ambled around the picnic table to where my brother was. At six-two or six-three, Dell had Thomas by about four inches and outweighed him by maybe fifty or sixty pounds.

“I’m waiting, Dickless,” he said. “What are you warning me against?”

Thomas looked flushed. Confused. The rest of us sat there, staring stupidly.

“You gonna take me on? Is that it? You got the balls to go a few rounds with your foreman?” He reached out and gave Thomas a little shove that sent him back a step. I felt my whole body clench up.

Thomas looked over at me, then at Leo and Ralph, then back at Dell. “No, I’m not going to ‘go a few rounds’ with you,” he said. “But if you don’t stop, I’ll talk to Lou Clukey. I’ll tell Lou you’re bothering me.”

Dell glanced at the rest of us, a grin on his face. “Well, you just
tell him whatever you have to tell him, Mr. Dickless Dicky Bird. You just go crying to your uncle Lou and let him know the Big Bad Wolf’s been teasing you and you don’t have the balls to do anything about it yourself.”

Dell reached over and poked my brother in the breastbone with his knuckles. Once. Twice. Three times. “Course, Uncle Lou might have one or two other little things on his mind. Like the new sidewalks they’re pouring over on Broad Street next week. Or that big paving job up on Nestor Avenue. But I’m sure Uncle Lou will just drop whatever he’s doing to come out here and give me a spanking for calling the little candy-ass fairy boy a bad little name.”

“Why can’t you just
stop
it?” Thomas blurted. “That’s all I’m asking you to do! Just stop calling me that name!” He was shaking badly.

Dell took a step closer—got within a couple of inches of his face. He reached out and began kneading Thomas’s shoulder. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll make you a deal, right here and now. You drop your drawers and show me and my witnesses here that you got the proper equipment, and I guess I’ll just have to come up with a new name for you.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Ralph muttered.

Dell’s hand moved from my brother’s shoulder to the back of his neck. Thomas flinched. “What do you say there, Dickless? You want to show us once and for all that that ain’t a twat between your legs?” Smirking, he began to sniff the air. He turned back to us. “You smell what I smell, boys? It’s either a rotten fish or Dickless’s smelly cunt.”

Leo’s laugh was a single nervous note.

Thomas swallowed. Said nothing.

“No deal, eh, Dickless? Well, that’s just what I figured. You just plain got the wrong equipment to mess with me. I rest my case.”

Dell looked over at Leo and me, his smile slackening. He seemed more miserable than triumphant. He told us to get the scythes out of the truck and start cutting down the meadow grass in the field. After we were finished, he said, we could fill the water jugs out at the spring. We could take our time, take a swim in the res
ervoir if we wanted to. Cool off. We’d done enough grunt work for one day. We could take it a little easy.

It was the sound of Thomas’s sobbing that made us all turn in his direction. His hands were yanking at his belt buckle, fumbling with the snap of his jeans.

“
Don’t!
” I yelled.

Thomas jerked his pants and underpants to his knees and stood there, blubbering, exposed. “Are you happy
NOW
?” he screamed at Dell. “
NOW
will you just shut up and leave me alone?”

Ralph and Leo looked away. Dell stood there, smiling and shaking his head. “Pathetic,” he said. “Just plain pathetic.”

I hustled over to my brother, shielding him. His humiliation was my own. “Pull your goddamned pants up!” I screamed at him. “What’s the matter with you?”