The place was a pigsty: dirty dishes and clutter everywhere you looked, tumbleweeds of cat fur all over the floor. It smelled, too—the whole place smelled like Dell. There was a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich and a half-drunk bottle of 7-Up on the coffee table. Drinkwater’s copy of Soul on Ice lay cover open on a stack of magazines.
“You know what I think?” I said. “I think Ralph lives here.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Leo said. “You catch on real quick.”
He walked over to a barbell on the floor, picked it up, did a couple of curls. Then he put the weight down and picked up Soul on Ice. “This book tells it like it is, man!” he said, mimicking Ralph. “I’ve read it 153 times now!” He tossed the book on the couch and started flipping through the magazines. “Hey, Birdsey, get over here,” he whispered. He looked quickly down the hall for Dell. “Check these out!”
Mixed in with the Rolling Stones and the head comics were homo magazines. On the cover of one, two guys were tonguing each other. On another, some dude was straddling a Harley, wearing just a biker jacket.
“They’re queers!” Leo whispered. “Ralphie and Dell! They’re queer for each other!”
“No, they’re not,” I said. “Dell’s got a wife.”
“Yeah? Where is she then? And whose magazines are these? Hers?”
Down the hall, a toilet flushed. “Come on,” I said. “I’m going outside. I’m getting out of here.”
Dell came out a minute later, calling to us from the porch. I couldn’t look at him. I needed to get the fuck out of there almost as much as I needed that car.
“I jumped the battery and started her up after work yesterday,” Dell said as we went around the back. “She sounded good. Here, let me start ‘er up again.”
“How come your wife’s selling it, anyway?” I asked.
“I told you already. She’s got MS. The doctor don’t want her to drive no more.” I followed his eyes to an upstairs window. Sure enough: a middle-aged woman, fat and sorry-looking, was at the window. She waved down at us; I waved back.
Dell backed his Galaxy out of the garage and inched it toward the Valiant until the bumpers clunked. We put up the hoods, connected the jumper cables. When Dell’s hand brushed against mine while he was checking a connection, I jerked it away. “If a queer ever tries anything funny with you,” Ray had once advised my brother and me, “knee him in the nuts first and ask questions later.”
Dell told me to get in the Valiant and start her up.
“So what do you think?” he said. “Sounds good, don’t it?”
“Sounds all right,” I said. “You mind if we take her for a test drive?”
“She ain’t registered and there’s no insurance. My wife let everything run out.”
“This thing have any snow tires?” Leo asked.
Dell shook his head. “What you see is what you get.”
The three of us stood there, staring at it. Then Dell reached inside and turned off the ignition. The yard went uncomfortably quiet.
“So, Dell,” Leo said. “What’s the story with Ralph?”
His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, what’s the story with him?”
“He answered the door a few minutes ago. Does he live here or something?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I was just wondering.”
Dell shoved his hands in his pockets, jingling his change. “Yeah, he lives here. Him and me and the Mrs. You got a problem with that?”
“Uh-uh,” Leo said. “We just didn’t know he lived here, that’s all. Neither of you ever mentioned it. You two related or something?”
For several seconds, the two of them just stared at each other. “I’m white and he’s a nigger,” Dell finally said. “What do you think?”
“So, anyway,” I said. “About the car.”
Dell took his time finishing his staring contest with Leo. Then he turned to me. “I’ll let you have it for four hundred,” he said. “That’s a damn good price.”
I told him I couldn’t afford four hundred—that I’d already told him two hundred was all I could afford.
“Two hundred bucks for this car? For two hundred bucks, I might as well let it stay right where it is and be a goddamned lawn ornament.”
“Two-fifty, then,” I said. “I can’t go any higher than that.” He spat on the grass. Said nothing. “Okay. Two-seventy-five then. That’s it. That’s my last offer.”
He stood there, smiling and shaking his head.
“It’s got over seventy-eight thousand miles on it, Dell. That tailpipe could go tomorrow. I’d have to get insurance, register the thing.”
“Yeah?” he said. “So?”
“You said yourself it’s just sitting here. I need a car.”
“We all need things, Dicky Bird. Three seventy-five. Take it or leave it.”
I shook my head. “Leave it,” I said.
He shrugged. “No skin off my nose. See you Monday.”
We were halfway across the lawn when Leo made a U-turn and walked back up to Dell. I followed, oblivious. “You know, it’s like you were saying yesterday, Dell,” Leo began. “What the guys on our crew do is nobody else’s business. Right? Like us smoking a few joints. Or you getting cocked on the job two or three days a week. Or harassing my buddy’s brother to the point where he’s in tears. To the point where he—”
“His brother’s a little dickless pansy-ass,” Dell said. “Quits his job over some stupid little thing like that. I can’t help it if he’s—”
“Hey, you know what I could never understand, Dell?” Leo said. I had no idea where this was going. “I could never understand why you’ve been so interested all summer about what Dominick’s brother’s got inside his pants. Why’d you go on and on with that dickless stuff all summer, anyway, Dell? Huh?”
Dell looked nervous—vulnerable. “Stupid kid can’t take a little bit of teasing, that ain’t my problem. That’s his problem.”
“Yeah, I guess. Because what us guys on the crew do is nobody else’s business, right? Not Lou Clukey’s or anyone else’s. Like, for example, the living arrangement you and Ralph got going out here. Lou know about you two being roommates, Dell?”
“Come on, Leo,” I said, turning to go. “He doesn’t want to sell me the car, fine.”
But there was a smile in Leo’s eyes. He stayed put. “How long’s he been living here, anyways? You and Ralph been roommates for a short time or a long time?”
“We ain’t ‘roommates,’” Dell said. “He sleeps on the couch on and off. Since his mother took off for parts unknown.”
Leo put his hands in his pockets. Scuffed at the dirt with the toe of his sneaker. “Yeah? That right? Was that while he was still a minor?”
Now there was genuine fear in Dell’s eyes. “You see that house?” he said. He swallowed. Tried to smile. “That one down there? The green one? Him and his old lady used to live up there. Top floor. She was no good. White girl, but she preferred the coons to her own kind. After the little girl was killed—his sister—it got so that the mother wasn’t good for anything. Drunk as a skunk half the time, screaming and fighting with all her different nigger boyfriends. Ralph was like one of those stray cats you feed once and then they won’t go away.”
“Come on, Leo,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“It’s her,” Dell said, nodding back toward the house. “My wife. She’s too good-hearted for her own good. White, colored, she don’t care. She’ll take in any stray dog. He ate more meals over here than he did at home. And then the next thing you know—”
“Whose fag magazines are those in there?” Leo said. “The ones in your living room? They yours or his? Or do you share them?”
Dell crossed his beefy arms across his chest. Looked from me to Leo. Moved to within a few inches of my face. The truth was this: in a fight, he could have probably killed both Leo and me. “What is this, Dicky Boy?” he asked me. “Blackmail? You and Big Mouth here trying to blackmail me?”
Was the tremor in my face visible? The winner of this one was going to be the guy who didn’t flinch first. “Blackmail?” I said.
“Because you and your buddy here and that pansy-ass brother of yours are going to be three sorry little motherfuckers if you fuck with me. You got it?”
My gut was churning, but I was into it now. There was no backing away from what Leo had begun. “No, this isn’t blackmail,” I said. “If this was blackmail, I’d be asking you to give me the car. But I’m not. I just want you to sell it for what it’s worth.”
Just when I thought the worst was coming, he nodded. “Two-seventy-five, you said?”
I looked over at Leo. Looked back again. “I said two-fifty.”
“What about you, Big Mouth?” he said, nodding over at Leo. “If your buddy and I make a little private deal here, you gonna keep your trap shut for once in your life?”
“Mum’s the word, my man,” Leo said. “Mum’s the word.”
“Okay, then, Dicky Boy. Bring the money over here Monday night. I want a bank check. Two-fifty. Make it out to Delbert Weeks.”
“No problem,” I said.
“No problem at all,” Leo echoed. “Delbert.”
“Good,” he said. “Now both of youse get off my fucking property before I change my mind. And do me a favor, will you, Dicky Boy? Explain to Big Mouth here what the difference is between a white guy and a nigger, will you? He can’t seem to figure it out on his own. Big Know It All he is, but that one escapes him.”
He pounded back in the house, slamming the screen door behind him.
We walked back up to where Leo had parked his car. Got in. Neither of us said anything. We rode for a mile or more in silence.
Leo was the first to speak. “Unbelievable,” he said. “Un-fucking-believable.”
“What?”
“All of it! The fact that they’re queers together! The fact that we got you that car for two-fifty! Frankly, Birds, I didn’t think you had it in you, but that was the sweetest victory I’ve ever seen. What’d you say to him? No, Dell, if this was blackmail, I’d expect you to give me the car. I wish I had that on tape, Birdseed. You’re my new hero.”
I told him to just shut up. Told him Ralph wasn’t queer.
“Hey, really, Birds. An hour ago, I was thinking you were a pussy because you wouldn’t sell a little weed on the side with me. Now, come to find out, we’re a couple of what-do-you-call-its . . . extortionists! I’m going to buy us a couple bottles of Boone’s Farm on the way out to the bridge. My treat, my man. This calls for a celebration.”
“I said shut up, Leo. Okay?”
“Okay, my man. Sure thing. No sweat. Because you are my fucking hero.”
The wine and two or three hits off of one of Ralph’s joints mellowed me out a little. Out at the trestle bridge, I kept feeling something striking my line but nothing would hook itself. Leo kept talking about queers. “And how about that little fruity kid we went to Kennedy with? He graduated in your year. The guy everyone always used to pitch pennies at in the hallway?”
“Francis Freeman?” I said.
“That’s the guy. Francis Freeman. He was definitely light in the loafers.”
“God,” I said. “This stuff from Ralph is strong. I am wrecked.”
“Me, too. So, what do you think, Birds? Could you ever do it?”
“Do what?”
He took a sip on the roach. When he held out the joint for me, I shook my head. “Make it with another guy,” he said, exhaling.
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Bring him on.”
“No, I mean it. How about if it was a matter of life or death?”
“How’s something like that going to be a matter of life or death?” I said.
“I don’t know. Suppose . . . okay, suppose this psycho-fag pulls a gun on you and says, ‘Okay, I got a bullet ready for your brain, but I’ll let you live if I can bugger you.’ Would you do it?”
“Jesus Christ, Leo,” I said, casting. “Give it a rest. Will you?”
“Would you?”
“That’s such a stupid question, I’m not even answering it.”
“All right, all right, how about some guy comes up to you and says, ‘See this four-on-the-floor ’69 Chevelle SS-396? How would you like to cruise up to Boston College on the weekends and visit your little honey in this mean machine? All’s you gotta do is let me suck your dick once a week.’ Would you do it then?”
“What are you, nuts or something?” I changed my mind about the joint—reached over for it. “Why? Would you?”
“Me? No way, man. I ain’t no three-dollar bill.” I reeled in, cast again. Leo cast. “I might consider doing it for a Mustang, though,” he said. I looked over at him. “I’m kidding, Birdseed. I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”
My mind floated from the Valiant I’d just bought to Drinkwater standing at the screen door at Dell’s to the sound of the ringing phone over at Dessa’s house. Fish or no fish, it felt better to be out here in the late afternoon sun than back at the house with my stupid, screwed-up brother. Better to fish and get stoned than wait all day long for her to pick up the phone. Let her wait now, I reasoned. Let her sit and wait for a call from the guy her father said wasn’t good enough for her. . . . Unless she agreed with him by now, after that stupid stunt I’d pulled out in her mother’s car. I’d scared her: that was the thing. Blown her trust.
I reeled in my line. Cast out as far as I could. Man, I was wasted.
“You ever have a guy hit on you?” Leo said.
“What?”
“A queer. Did a queer ever try and pick you up?”
“Man, Leo, would you get off it about queers?”
“Did you, though?”
“No. Why? Did you?”
“Nah. Not really. . . . Just this old guy once. Down at the beach. He came up to my blanket and asked me if I wanted to take a walk with him and let him give me a hum job.”
I looked over at his dope-glazed eyes. “And what’d you say?”
“I told him no. That I was saving myself for you, Birdseed. Hey, you know what? Maybe you and me and Ralph and Dell can go on a double date sometime.”
I rolled my eyes. “Maybe Dell’s one. But not Ralph.”
“You mark my words, Birdsey. Believe me.”
“Why? What makes you such a big expert?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m a theater major, aren’t I?”
“Yeah? So? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Because there are a lot of fags in theater. There’s tons of ’em. You know that professor I was talking about before? The Shakespeare teacher? He’s one.”
“Yeah?” I said. “And how do you know that? He announce it in class one day?”
Leo reeled in his line. “This is hopeless,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“No. Answer the question,” I said. “You tell me your teacher’s a homo. You tell me you’re an expert about it. I’d just like to know how you know.”
“I just do, that’s all.” I sat there, watching him unhook his lure. As wrecked as I was, the operation was totally interesting to me.
“Because the guy kissed me once. Okay?” I looked from Leo’s fingers to his face.
“He kissed you? Some professor kissed you? That’s bullshit, Leo.”
“Why would I bullshit about that?” he said. “You think I go around—”
“Whereabouts? In class? Up on the stage?”
“At his apartment.”
“His apartment?” I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “What were you doing at the guy’s apartment?”
“It’s not like I went over there by myself,” he said. “There was a bunch of us went over there.” He chugged the last of the wine. Flung the bottle against a ledge. We both paused for the satisfaction—the sound of smashing glass. “He had this cookout thing at his place at the end of the semester. For the whole class. He’d bought all this food and wine and shit, but then only about six or seven of us showed u
p. I got wasted—I mean, the guy had bought enough stuff for about twenty people—and before you know it . . . I don’t know. I was the last one there. Me and him. . . . And he just . . .”
“Just what?”
“I told you already. He kissed me.”
I sat there.
“It wasn’t that big a deal, Dominick. You don’t have to look at me like that. He just did it, and then the two of us laughed a little, and I said thanks but no thanks, and he said fine, fine, he was just—how did he put it?—he was giving me an option I could exercise if I felt like it. And that was that.”
“That’s weird,” I said.
“Why?” he said. “What’s so weird about it? It’s different in theater. . . . Hey, I swear to Christ, Birdsey, if you ever tell anyone about—”
“I just can’t believe some teacher would just—”
“That’s because you’re so fucking naive,” he said. “You were brought up in this one-horse town. You never been anywhere, man. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
I stood up, reeling a little from the dope, and followed Leo down the path.
Back in the car, we decided to smoke the second joint. Leo lit the thing up and passed it over.
I was just sitting there, thinking. “It happened to my brother one time,” I said.
“What?”
“Thomas. This gay guy started coming on to him once while he was hitchhiking. He was . . . he told me about it.”
“Told you about what?” Leo said. He was wasted.
“This . . . this guy in a station wagon pulled over. He had out-of-state plates. Michigan, I think he said. . . . And he . . . Thomas said he looked like somebody’s grandfather, this guy—white hair, one of those old-man sweaters with the patches on the sleeves, all these family snapshots magnetized to the dashboard. So he . . . he gets in the car and . . .” Leo looked so stoned, I couldn’t tell if anything was registering. If he was even listening. “And the guy says how he’s visiting his daughter and her family. How he’d just decided to go out and take a drive. Says he’s lonely. So . . . so they’re riding along. Thomas and him. He just seemed like some friendly old guy. And then, out of the blue, he says, ‘You know what? You’re a good-looking son of a gun. Why don’t I find someplace and pull over so the two of us can get to know each other a little better?’ He said he’d pay him twenty bucks to . . .”