Mark hopped back into the car with some rum, and we got a carton of pop at a one-stop store and took off for the lake. It was too cold to go swimming, but the lake is always a good place to go. There are a mess of them--lakes, that is--around here.
"I get so sick," Angela was saying. "I feel like I can't take it any more, life is so lousy. I'm lousy, everything is lousy. I can't stand it at home, I can't stand it at school, I can't stand it anywhere. I always thought, hell, I can get what I want. Get what I want and everybody can go to hell. But it doesn't work that way, Bryon. I'm going to hell right along with them. I'm already there."
Tomorrow she would be tough again, hard-as-rock Angela Shepard. Tonight she was tired. And drunk.
She passed out on my shoulder. We were stopped on a little dirt road, one of the millions that run along the lake and through the woods surrounding it. Mark sighed, "I thought she was never gonna shut up. I sure hate to see gutsy chicks break. Destroys my faith in human nature."
"You're never gonna break, huh?"
"Nope," Mark said. He pulled a pair of scissors out of his pocket. "Picked these up at the one-stop." He reached over and began cutting off Angela's beautiful long blue-black hair. Close to her head.
"You ain't gonna cut it all off?" I said, stunned.
"Yeah, I am. Setting up Curtis like she did, gettin me cracked like that. She coulda had me killed."
"That's right," I said, and suddenly all the hatred I had had for Angela, for her brother Curly, for everything she stood for, came back. I sat and watched Mark cut off all her hair. He tied it all up neatly when he had finished the job. It was a couple of feet long. Even with her hair gone and her makeup streaked all over her face, Angela was a beauty. She would always be. A lot of good it did her.
We drove home about three that morning. Mark and me finished what was left of the rum. We dumped Angela and her hair in her front yard. She never even woke up. I didn't think she'd remember getting into the car with us, but her girl friends would probably tell her that. She'd know who had cut off her hair.
She wouldn't do anything about it though, because one thing I knew about ol' Angel, she was proud. She'd say she had her hair cut at the beauty shop. She'd say, "I was sick of all that hot mess." She'd never let on.
I started crying on the way home from Angela's and Mark had to drive. Sometimes rum affects me like that.
I was still crying when we got home. We sat on the porch and I cried while Mark patted me on the back and said, "Hey, take it easy, man, everything's going to be all right."
I finally quit and sat sniffing and wiping my eyes on my shirt sleeve. It was a quiet night. "I was thinking . . ."
"Yeah?" Mark said, in the same easy, concerned voice. "What were you thinkin', Bryon?"
"About that kid Mike, the one in the hospital. We talked to him a couple of times, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember. He got beat up tryin' to do a black chick a favor."
"How come things always happen like that? Seems like you let your defenses down for one second and, man, you get it. Pow! Care about somebody, give a damn for another person, and you get blasted. How come it's like that?"
"You got me, Bryon. I never thought about it. I guess 'cause nothin' bad has ever happened to me."
I looked at him. Nothing bad had ever happened to him? His parents had killed each other in a drunken fight when he was nine years old and he saw it all. He had been arrested for auto theft. He had seen Charlie shot and killed. He had nearly been killed himself by some punk kid he had never seen before.
Nothing bad had ever happened to him? Then I knew what he meant. Those things hadn't left a mark on him, because he was Mark the lion--Mark, different from other people. Beautiful Mark, who didn't give a damn about anyone. Except me.
I suddenly knew why everyone liked Mark, why everyone wanted to be his friend. Who hasn't dreamed of having a pet lion to stand between you and the world? Golden, dangerous Mark.
"You are my best friend, Mark," I said, still a little drunk. "Just like a brother to me."
"I know, buddy," he said, patting me again. "Take it easy; don't start bawling again."
"I sure wish I knew where M&M was," I said, and tears were running down my face again in spite of myself. "I like that dumb little kid. I wish I knew what happened to him."
"He's O.K. Take my word for it."
"You know where he is!" I said. "He's been gone all these weeks and you know where he is!"
"Yeah, I do. If he wanted to come home, he'd come home. Don't worry."
"You gotta take me to where he is, Mark," I said, knowing I sounded like a drunken nitwit--but I couldn't help it, seeing how I was so drunk.
"Sure, Bryon, don't cry. I'll take you there tomorrow. But don't count on him comin' home."
"Cathy is awful worried about him. You know, Mark, I think I'm gonna marry Cathy."
"Come on, man," Mark said, trying to pull me to my feet. "Yeah, marry Cathy and be sure and name all the kids after me. Let's go in the house. Try an' be quiet, O.K.? You don't want the old lady to see you like this. I shoulda known better than to let you drink all that rum."
"Didn't you drink any?"
"Naw, I was drinkin' plain Coke."
"I drank all that rum by myself?" I couldn't believe it. I'm not much of a boozer.
" 'Cept for what Angela drank." Mark was helping me up the steps. I was weaving back and forth. If he hadn't been hanging onto me, I would have dropped flat on my face.
"Poor Angel--we shoulda left her alone, Mark. That was a mean thing to do, cut off her hair like that."
"Please, Bryon, for Pete's sake, don't cry any more." He half-dragged me into our room and pushed me onto my bed. I passed out. I could hear Mark moving around the room, feel him taking my shoes off and pulling the blanket up over me, but it was all as if he was real far away, or I was way down inside myself.
"What'd I ever do to deserve you, Mark? Pull a thorn outa your paw?"
"Bryon, buddy, you are as wiped out as I've ever seen you. I think you'd better shut up and go to sleep."
"When did we start runnin' around together, Mark? Remember?"
"We've always been friends. I can't remember when we weren't."
"How come your old man shot your mother? She shot him back, but it was too late because she was dying anyway." I really was drunk, because I had never mentioned that to Mark in all the years I had known him.
"It was me. I was under the porch--I could hear them real plain. And the old man was sayin', 'I don't care, I ain't never seen a kid with eyes that color. Nobody on my side of the family has eyes that color--not on yours either.' And the old lady says, 'That's right Why should he look like anybody in your family? He ain't yours.' And then they start yelling and I hear this sound like a couple of firecrackers. And I think, well, I can go live with Bryon and his old lady."
"Did you really think that?" I opened my eyes, and the room was turning around slowly. It was making me sick. Something was making me sick.
"Yeah, I did. I didn't like livin' at home; I got sick of them yelling and fighting all the time. I got whipped a lot, too. I remember thinking, This'll save me the trouble of shooting them myself. I don't like anybody hurtin' me."
"I'm glad you came to live with us."
"Me too. Now you really better shut up, man."
"Why you tryin' to shut me up?" I said, making an effort to sit up. It made me even sicker, so I lay back down. "You got a cigarette?"
"Right in the old secret place." Mark pulled back his mattress and got a pack of cigarettes. He always kept an extra pack there. When we were little and didn't want Mom to know we smoked, we kept our cigarettes hidden. It wasn't till much later that we found out she had known about it all along.
I couldn't light my cigarette for some reason. Mark lit it for me and stuck it in my mouth. He sat back on his bed watching me, his elbows on the window sill. I could see the end of his cigarette glowing.
"Charlie, he tried to help somebody out and look
what happened to him," I said. This was connected with what he'd said about Mike somehow, but Mark followed my train of thought, just like he always had.
"Charlie wasn't about to let a couple of his friends get beat up by some hicks. What happened then, well, that was just the way things turn out sometimes."
"Yeah, but listen, Mark, if somebody had said to him, 'Is savin' a couple of dumb kids from gettin' beat up worth your life?' he woulda said, 'Hell, no!' Charlie woulda said that, Mark."
"Sure he woulda said that. But you don't know what's comin'. Nobody does. He sure knew he was taking a chance. Bryon, he musta known those guys had guns. He knew they were rough guys. He took a chance, and he got a rotten break. That's it."
"It doesn't make any sense. Like you gettin' busted with that bottle. A little harder and you woulda been dead."
"But I ain't. This is the way it is, Bryon. Angela Shepard is a tough little chick who set out to get a shy guy who didn't know she was alive, so she sweet-talks some dummy into fighting for her, and I happen to be friends with Curtis, happen to be sittin' on the car with him when the dummy picks the fight with him, and I happen to be a little high. So I step in between Curtis and the punk. Now, if Angela wasn't tough, if she was a nice girl from the West Side--maybe she woulda left well enough alone and given up on Curtis. If Curtis was a playboy like you, he woulda picked her up when she wanted to be picked up. If that kid wasn't so dumb, he would have never taken on Curtis, who is no slouch of a fighter, man, I can tell you. If I had had a date that night, I woulda been somewhere else. But Bryon, that ain't the way things went. You can't walk through your whole life saying 'If.' You can't keep trying to figure out why things happen, man. That's what old people do. That's when you can't get away with things any more. You gotta just take things as they come, and quit trying to reason them out. Bryon, you never used to wonder about things. Man, I been gettin' worried about you. You start wonderin' why, and you get old. Lately, I felt like you were leavin' me, man. You used to have all the answers."
"I can't help it, Mark. I can't help thinking about things. Like Mike and Charlie and M&M and you--it's all mixed up and I can't help it."
"You can help thinking about it." He leaned over his bed, reached across the short space that separated us, and yanked my cigarette out of my fingers.
"You're going to go to sleep and burn us alive," he said.
I remember I was going to say, "No I ain't," but I was asleep before I could get the words out.
8
I was real hung over the next morning. Besides that, I had to get up early and go to work. Mark woke me up. He was a human alarm clock and never needed more than five hour's sleep a night. Me, if I don't get at least nine hours, I feel dead. I felt dead that Saturday morning. I wished I was, anyway. I was feeling so bad that I actually stuck a loaf of bread in a grocery bag and dropped three cans of soup on top of it. Bread always goes on top. In a supermarket this is like the Ten Commandments all rolled into one. It was a wonder I didn't lose my job that Saturday.
I carried groceries for this one young housewife type, and when I put the bags in her car she handed me her phone number. I was feeling so bad I groaned, "Lady, you gotta be kidding."
Like I said, it was a wonder I didn't lose my job. It was two in the afternoon before the sound of the cash register quit blasting my ears, and it was quitting time before I finally felt I could eat something. This shows you how sick I was.
I had a date with Cathy that night, but she had to work late. I would pick her up at the hospital snack shop at ten. This was fine with me, as I wanted a chance to go look for M&M. Mark knew where he was.
When I got off work, I found Mark sitting in my car.
"I figured you'd want to hunt for M&M," he said. "How's your head?"
"Better. Man, don't ever let me guzzle like that again."
Mark shrugged. "You wanted to. You had to get good and drunk because I was cutting Angela's hair off and you couldn't take it."
I flipped a remark that I had said many times before, but not to him. Even from my side of the car I felt him tighten, getting ready to spring. The gulf was between us again. For some reason, I was hacked off because he didn't need to sleep nine hours, because he wasn't hung over.
"You sound like Cathy," I said.
"Heaven forbid."
"What have you got against her, anyway?"
"What's she got against me?"
"You're a bad influence." I don't know why I said that, because Cathy sure as hell never said anything like it.
Mark was quiet for a minute, then he said something really rotten. I had it coming for what I'd said to him, but he didn't have to drag Cathy into it. I gripped the steering wheel. "You want to get outa this car and have it out?"
"You don't want to swing on me, do you?" It was partly a statement and partly a request. I was quiet.
"I'm sorry," Mark said, and I kept driving. This was as close as we ever came to having a fight.
*
I followed the directions Mark gave me. We went into this old part of town which used to be a really classy place maybe thirty or forty years ago, with these huge old houses that were probably a big deal when they were built. They just looked gloomy now; most of them were divided into flats.
On Mark's say-so I pulled into a driveway in front of one of them. There was a sign hanging from the porch ceiling that said "Love" in red-and-green letters.
"He's here?" I asked, because I wasn't sure what was going on.
"Last time I was here he was." Mark got out of the car. You can tell when somebody is familiar with a place. Mark had been here many times before. "Come on."
I got out of the car, wondering what in the world Mark could have been doing here. Mark didn't knock, he just opened the front door and walked in. I followed him. The whole inside of the house was freaked out with posters. A girl with long, streaked, blond hair, wearing blue jeans and a paint-splattered shirt, was lying on a beat-up couch. She had the deadest, most colorless face I had ever seen.
"Hello, Cat," she said to Mark. She knew him; she didn't call everybody "Cat."
"Peace, baby," Mark said. I tried not to laugh. I dig hippies O.K.--I mean, they've got some great ideas, but sometimes it was funny.
"Freaked out?" Mark said politely, as if he were saying "How are you these days?"
"'Way out, man." She was staring at the ceiling so intently that I glanced up there, just to make sure the answer to the universe wasn't written across it. If it was, I couldn't see it. Maybe she could.
Mark stepped over a stringless guitar and went upstairs. I stumbled after him, looking around. Somebody was in the kitchen singing. Each of the steps was painted a different color. It was a good effect, but they were awful dirty.
Mark stepped into a bedroom. There were about six or seven kids in it. One kid was lying on a bed watching his fingernails. The others were sitting cross-legged in a circle, talking about some book. I hadn't read it so I didn't get the conversation, but these kids were not dumb. They were all in blue jeans and old shirts and fringed vests. A couple of them were smoking grass.
"Hi, Cat," a guy with a beard and a flowered shirt said.
"I'm looking for M&M," Mark said. "You seen him?"
"Baby Freak? He ain't been around today. The kid's flying, man. He's going to crash."
"You didn't let him take anything, did you?" I said. This may have been against house rules, as nobody had said anything to me yet, but this place was getting on my nerves.
"There isn't any 'letting' here," this fat chick says. "We're free."
I looked her over with the practiced eye of a playboy and popped off with something really good. Then I raised two fingers and said "Peace." This seemed to earn their forgiveness, because they all went back to their literary discussion.
Now the kid on the bed was painting his fingernails with green water-color.
On the way out we passed the blond chick. She was reading a book and smoking grass.
"You see
n Baby Freak?" Mark asked.
She shook her head. "Sorry. See you around, Cat." Even sitting up she looked dead.
When we got back into the car I said, "You dating her?"
"Sometimes. Like the lady said, they're free."
I thought about that a long time. I am the first to admit I've got hang ups. I don't think I'd ever consider myself really free.
But I'm not sure I'd consider them free, either.
"Just because it ain't your bag, don't knock it," Mark said, after we had driven in silence for a while.
"I didn't say anything."
"Grass, rum, both are a high."
"Yeah, well, listen, man, rum's going to maybe get me a weekend in the drunk tank. Grass could get me five years in the pen."
"That law ain't necessarily right."
"It's the way things are." I was puzzled. I had never known Mark to smoke pot. I wondered why he was defending it.
"I don't smoke it, so quit worrying," Mark said, reading my mind as usual. "I just don't like to see you judging people."
"What the hell is bugging you? I didn't say anything."
Mark was quiet. Then he said, "You remember when the Socs used to come through here looking for somebody to beat up?"
"Yeah."
"You remember when me and you beat up that hippie kid in the park?"
"Yeah," I said.
"I'm a tough punk, Bryon, but I ain't dumb." We drove the rest of the way home in silence.
*
I picked Cathy up at the hospital. I didn't tell her about going to the hippie house to look for M&M. I didn't see any sense in getting her all upset. After all, I hadn't found him.
We drove up and down the Ribbon, then stopped by the park on the way home. This was becoming standard procedure. I was getting more and more serious about Cathy, and this was really strange for me. I had always had a love-'em-and-leave-'em attitude. Even with Angela, I guess it was more a pride thing than a love thing. I still hadn't told Cathy I loved her though. It was like my never thanking Charlie for letting me use his car. It was something I just couldn't do when it meant anything.