When I awoke the next day, I felt feverish and uncomfortable. The strong morning sunlight poured through the windows and over me like an extra, unnecessary blanket.
After I brushed my teeth, I went to Ross's room and knocked on the door. When there was no answer I cautiously pushed it open. There were wooden bunk beds in both our rooms. I saw Ross hanging over the edge of the top one, busily talking to Bobby, who was lying on his back with his hands behind his head.
«What do you want, asshole? More syrup?»
Bobby fanned a fly away from his nose and yawned. Last night's joke was last night, and now it was time for something new.
«You know, Ross, if you could sneak that shotgun out of the house, we could go down to the river and pick off a few seagulls. I hate those fucking birds.»
We lived half a mile from a river. It was a place where you went in the summer when there was nothing else to do, or if you were lucky enough to have convinced a girl to go «swimming» there with you. Since the water was so brown and polluted, you never swam — as soon as you got your towels down on the beach you started necking.
To get to the water you had to cross railroad tracks. You did it carefully and stepped ridiculously high over anything that looked even vaguely suspicious: down there somewhere on the ground was the third rail and you knew that if you ever so much as touched it you would be instantly electrocuted.
Bobby and Ross had been down to the tracks before with guns. In fact, Ross was the only other member of the gang who'd had the «guts» to shoot at passing cattle cars with one of Bobby's many rifles. They were never caught.
My parents went shopping that morning, so there was no problem taking the gun out of the house. Ross slid it back into its cardboard box, and that was that for camouflage. They allowed me to tag along on the threat that if I said anything about it afterward they'd boil me in oil.
When we got down to the tracks Bobby told Ross to get the gun out — he wanted to take a couple of shots. I could see Ross wanted to shoot first; a peeved, mean look swept across his face. But it was gone in an instant. He handed the gun over, along with a bunch of red and brassy-gold shells he had stuffed in his back pocket. The only thing he had left was the empty box; he threw that at me.
The sun was hot, and I peeled off my T-shirt. When it was halfway over my head, I heard the pof of the first shot and an instantaneous crash of glass somewhere.
«Holy shit, Bobby! You think you hit the station?» Ross's voice was high and scared.
«I'll be fucked if I know, man.» He reloaded and shot off in another direction. I put my hands over my ears and looked at the ground. I was already petrified, and things had just begun.
«Ross, baby, this is one honey of a gun. I can tell already. Let's go, man.»
We walked twelve or fifteen feet apart. Bobby, Ross, then me. That's very important, as you'll see in a moment. Bobby held the shotgun down at his side, barrel toward the ground. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. It was dull blue and the railroad tracks under our feet were hot silver as we stepped gingerly over them. The light everywhere burned my eyes and made me squint. I wished to God I was home. What were they going to do now? What would happen if they were in the mood for something unnecessary and vicious, like shooting at cattle as they moved slowly by in those slatted red and brown freight cars, already on their way to the slaughterhouse? I hated the gun, I hated my great fear, I hated my brother and his friend. But they would never, ever know that.
We were moving at the same pace, our legs lifting and falling at the same time. Then Ross stumbled on something and fell straight forward. I heard an angry buzz like an outboard motor, the gravel skittering away from under my brother's sneaker. His shoulder touched the third rail, and his head twisted around on his neck. There was a loud hum, a sharp hiss and snap. His face twisted up and up and up into an impossible, irretrievable smile.
3
Why am I lying? Why am I already leaving out a part of this story that is so necessary? What difference does it make now? All right. Before I go on, here's a piece of the puzzle I've been hiding behind my back.
Bobby had an older sister named Lee. At eighteen she was the most stunning girl you'd ever want to see. By the time Ross and Bobby became close friends, she had been out of school for a few years, but people still talked about her because she was really incredible.
She'd been captain of the cheerleaders, a member of the Pep Club and the Gourmet Club. I knew all of this by heart because Ross had a high school yearbook from when she graduated, and as is so often the case with the prettiest girl in school, it seemed as if her face was on every other page: cartwheeling, being crowned Prom Queen, smiling magnificently at us from behind an armload of books. How many times had I devoured those pictures? Hundreds? A thousand? A lot.
What I didn't understand until later was that part of her special aura came from pure sensuality. I didn't know if she was «fast,» because my only authority on her was my brother, who contended he'd had her a million times, but even the most innocent of those pictures gave off an aroma of sexiness as strong as the smell of fresh baked bread.
Ross's birthday present when I turned twelve was to teach me how to masturbate. Part of the gift was a three-month-old copy of Gent magazine, but from the first I could only climax if I thought of real women. The zeppelin breasts and sex-crazed expressions of those pinup girls scared me more than turned me on. No, my idea of sexual frenzy was the photograph of Lee Hanley doing a jump cheer at a football game that had somehow caught a delicious smidgen of her underpants while she was in mid-flight.
Let me say, though, that I'd fallen in love with her long before I learned to play with myself, so the first time I used her as my fantasy woman I felt rotten, because I knew I'd somehow let her down, regardless of the fact I'd never said two words to her. But that guilt was short-lived, because my twelve-year-old penis was anxious to get on with business, so I continued to ravish her picture with my hungry eyes and myself with a jumpy hand.
Sometimes I'd get completely carried away, and looking at the ceiling as I felt my body blast off into the stratosphere, I'd start to call her name again and again. Lee Hanley! Oh! Leeee! Although I tried to waltz myself around only when I was sure no one else was home, I made the mistake of not checking one afternoon, and that oversight was disastrous.
Bermuda shorts down at my knees, the school yearbook Propped comfortably on my chest, I had started singing my Lee song when the door suddenly flew open and Ross appeared.
«I caught you! Lee Hanley, huh? You're jerking off to Lee Hanley? Boy, wait'll Bobby hears this! He's going to chop you into hamburger. Hey, what've you got there? That's my yearbook! Gimme that!» He snatched it out of my hand and looked at the picture. «Jeez, wait'll I tell Bobby, man. Shit, I'd hate to be you.» His face was pure triumph.
From that moment on, the taunts and torture began and didn't end for more than a year. That night I pulled down the bedspread and found a photograph taped to my pillow: a mutilated body on a battlefield with a soldier looking at it indifferently. In blood-red ink the soldier was labeled Bobby, and I was the corpse.
A lot of that sort of thing went on, but the most frightening moments were when Ross would casually say to Bobby, «Want to know what my brother does, Bobby? Wait'll you hear this one, the little pig!» Looking straight at me, a gleam smeared across his face, he'd pause for millenniums, making me wish I was either in Sumatra or dead, or both. Inevitably he'd finish by saying, «He picks his nose,» or something equally mean and true, but nothing compared to «it,» and I could breathe easily again.