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In which the boys are caught in a lie and sent on their way. |
3. In which the boys are caught in a lie and sent on their way After that, we stood there for a moment silently, me still sniffling and wiping the results of Gerd's assault off of my face. We didn't know what to say to each other and really we didn't know what to do. It was obvious we couldn't stay there, but on the other hand it was hot and anywhere we could go to was at least a mile away, which meant Toadstool hauling his sweating lard through the early afternoon heat. In comparison, it was somewhat comfortable underneath that oak tree beside the creek, and the only thing that was keeping us from staying there for a lot longer was the thought that our moms had pretty much hit the panic button by now. "Way to back me up with Gerd," I finally said, and I was still kind of sobbing when I said it. "What'd you expect me to do?" Toadstool asked, and he was still looking down and fidgeting. "You could've at least agreed with me. You could've jumped in when he started hitting me. How about doing something, you gay rag. He couldn't have taken us both." "If you'd have kept your mouth shut he probably would have taken us home, eventually, at least. And if I'd have jumped in those girls would've joined in and we'd have both been beaten twice as hard." "They were girls, scrotum breath. You'd have to be some kind of weak to let those girls beat on you." In the two years prior I had been beaten up by girls three times, a fact of which Toadstool was well aware. And sure, each of those girls were quite a bit older than me, but so were Chelsea and Stephi. In hindsight, Toadstool was probably pretty smart to stay out of the fray, because while the breeze from a puppy's wagging tail could probably knock Chelsea down, Stephi looked like she could take care of herself and she'd already threatened to kill us once. After a few more minutes of us standing there and me sniffling a lot more, Toadstool asked, "What do we do now?" "What do you think, you retard? We have to head back to Guardian and try to find a phone somewhere." "It's a long way back to Guardian. And it's hot. I think it's got to be the hottest day of the year." "So what, you want to stay here? Maybe we could make a tent and wait for our moms to figure out where we are." "No, I'm just saying. . ." "Any idiot can see we've got to go back to Guardian. I don't really want to go into the Four Corners, not this time of day, but maybe we can go into the restaurant and they'll let us use the phone." "Anything out of Guardian is long distance. . ." "You know what, then, you stay here, I'll go into Guardian. I'll see if I can remember that you're out here when I call home, too." "I didn't say I wasn't going to go. I just said that they're probably not going to want to let us call because of the long distance charges. And I'm also just saying that it's an awfully long walk in the heat." To emphasize the point, Toadstool began to unbutton his flannel shirt and expose that belly of his, something I didn't need to see. Even in the shade he was sweating fairly profusely, so within a few moments that gut of his looked like a glazed ham. I started to pick up the fishing tackle, but Toadstool said, "I'm not taking the fishing stuff." "What kind of a woman are you?" I asked, and I had started whining again. "That's my dad's old fishing stuff over there and I sure ain't going to leave them for anyone to come along and run off with." "Do what you want, I don't care. I just know that it's going to be tough enough getting back to Guardian in this heat, we don't need the extra problem of lugging the fishing stuff along." I was still a little ticked off at Toadstool for what happened between Gerd and me, so anything he said at that moment was going to make me mad, but what made me madder was that he was right. I didn't really want to leave the fishing tackle because it had been one of the few things of my dad's that had been given to me after he was killed, but as hot as it was it would've just been ridiculous to keep carrying it along. So, just as much for show as anything, I walked over and kicked the tackle box, which sent the bait and bobs and stuff flying, but I left it there and got ready to head out to the road. Toadstool, though, went over to the creek and started cupping water in his hands and splashing it over him. "I thought we had to go," I said, still annoyed. "I didn't know we had time to take a bath." "It's the last chance we're going to have to cool ourselves down before we hit the highway. I thought that I'd take advantage of it." Once again, I knew he was right, though I didn't really want to do anything at that moment to make it seem like I agreed with him. I walked over to the creek a few yards away from him and, looking down into it, that water sure did look enticing. I thought about taking a drink, but then I saw some stuff floating that I didn't recognize, and I spotted a crawdad making his way downstream, and I got grossed out just a bit, so I made do by just splashing a little water over my head and down my neck. "You ready to go?" Toadstool asked. He was standing right behind me. I didn't answer, but instead walked past him and headed for the road. I wasn't even really that mad at him anymore, but I needed him to think I was still mad at him because I never wanted to let him off the hook, at least not that easy. I always figured that I could use those perceived hurts as bargaining chips for later, like if I wanted him to take my tray up for me at school or I needed someone to do my math homework for me. Him sitting still when Gerd assaulted me would be a bargaining chip for something huge, or so I thought. As it was, I never really ever got to use it. I started moving at a pretty good clip down the rocky, unpaved county road that led to the highway. It took Toadstool a few minutes to catch up to me, and when he did he was huffing and puffing and wheezing. I pretended not to notice. Still, it had taken everything he had to catch up with me, and now he was really struggling just to walk. "You know," I said, looking straight ahead and avoiding any eye contact with him, "if you'd keep away from the donuts sometime you wouldn't have so much of a problem moving that lard of yours." "Shut up," he said, and I could tell any sympathy he'd had for me was beginning to wear off. "Screw you, butt-face." "You want to, fag boy." "In your dreams." "In your fantasies." "Your butt's so big that nobody'd be able to find where to put it." "So you're looking for it?" We went on like this for awhile, Toadstool insulting me between gasps for air and occasional rest stops, me having no sympathy for him and moving on, which just made him then have to run the best he could after me, wearing him out even more. He then would tell me how gay I was and I'd respond by telling him how he was more gay and we'd go on like that. Now before I go on, I know that all those gay insults we were throwing around must seem pretty insensitive to all the gays out there or to people who know gays, but the one thing you've got to know was that, for a boy growing up in rural southern Illinois in the 1970's, the worst thing that could happen to him was that he'd be thought to be a homosexual. So, of course, being guys, we called each other gay all the time just to prove a point, though I’m not really sure what that point was. We had guys who nearly turned gay name-calling into an art form, though most of the time it was just annoying. For example, there was this one guy, Jimmy Halloway, who would take everything you admitted to liking and put the word fag or gay or queer into it, and he really wasn't all that clever about it, but he would laugh like it was the funniest thing in the world. If you were into REO Speedwagon, he'd say you liked REO Fagwagon, and if you said you'd been watching Starsky and Hutch the night before, he'd say you watched Starsgay and Hutch. I remember admitting in '79 that I liked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, back when Doug Williams was quarterbacking the team, and he called me a Tampa Gay Fagganeer fan so many times I finally threatened to bust his skull, even though he knew I wasn't capable of doing it. You always had to take those insults with a grain of salt, too, because if you acted too offended at them, then people began to think that you were really gay, and that would be the end of things for you at Garen High. The only person that anyone thought was really gay in my class was this kid called Gary Rafer. He had the misfortune of being born tall and thin, possessing a pretty good lisp and a handshake that felt like you were gripping overcooked spaghetti. He had red hair and buck teeth and freckles and talked with a soft, deep voice that made him sound like he would just love being a girl and he hung out with all the overweight band and science club chicks that no boy at Garen High would date. Somewhere around junior high school, when we all started to come into the knowledge that some guys like to kiss other guys, some kids started calling him Gay Ray, and that name stuck with him through the rest of school. It got pretty bad for him once we got into high school, and Ben Stegler used to make a daily habit out of making Gary's life miserable. Some of the teachers tried to help him out, but there's only so many of them and there was a lot of us, so somewhere along the line some time during the day Gary would get his harassment. Still, the worst thing I think ever happened to him was done by this one stoner chick named Macy Hammel. Most of the stoner chicks I knew at Garen were too fat or too skinny or looked like they were fifteen seconds away from death, but it seemed to me that each class had at least one stoner chick who could turn your head, even if you knew she was nothing but trouble. Macy was our stoner chick. She was kind of small except she had a nice rack and she had this cute weasel look to her face, kind of like she always had some kind of mischief lined up but, with her, you didn't mind. Of course, by the time she was twenty-five she'd had five kids, had doubled her weight and was a welfare mom, but at sixteen she was still a little all right and, despite everything, she was even popular with some of the jocks, mainly because she was pretty easy. Anyway, one night she and her friends had this sleepover, or whatever it is that stoner girls do when they get together, and apparently she lost a bet or something. The next Monday she waited for Gary just outside of Coach Jenner's health class and when class let out and Gary walked out the door, she literally climbed up the guy and give him a big kiss right on the mouth. Then, she went running down the hall screaming, "Oh, god, I just kissed a fag!" Almost everyone in the hallway cracked up over that, even Coach Jenner, who tried to compose himself a little and failed, and all Gary could do was hang his head and walk away. Of course, the school had to act like it was mad about it, and Macy was suspended for awhile, which I don't think really bugged her any, and in the meantime no one could really undo what had happened to Gary, not that anyone in Garen would really want to. It was really a wonder that he ever made it through high school at all, and even more incredible that he continued to live there, I think until his mom died. Even after he had grown up Stegler would yell stuff at him in the streets because Stegler never did grow up past the fifth grade. I don't know whatever really happened to Gary, but I would have to think that he was glad when he was able to put the town of Garen behind him. Anyway, once Toadstool and I made it to the highway the heat coming off that asphalt hit us hard. I stopped walking so fast and we both stopped insulting each other and for awhile we were quiet while we walked the mile or so to the bridge that led to Guardian. By that time the sweat was pouring off of Toadstool, and I had enough water flowing out of me to completely soak my t-shirt and to make my nether regions really uncomfortable. The walk seemed to take forever, and the highway was hot enough to make the village of Guardian shimmer as we walked towards it. Every once in awhile, mercifully, a car would race past us causing a short breeze, but it always seemed like the air behind it was more dead and more humid than it had been before. We didn't say anything once we reached the bridge, just watched for cars real carefully and walked over into Guardian. Right across the main square from the Four Corners was Sam 'n Ella's Restaurant and yes, for all of those city people who think that dumb rural folk can't possibly understand the medical implications, we all got the joke. Well, everyone but old Sam Goettel, the retired Garen postmaster who bought the old general store in Guardian with the idea that the village needed a regular restaurant as much as it needed a bar. Sam wasn't an idiot, but when he had his mind made up on something it was hard to talk him out of it and he wanted the restaurant to have his name on it as well as his wife's. Somebody tried to convince Sam to reverse the names, which just made Sam mad, and he'd go on for awhile about how in a good Christian society the man's name always came first, and what was wrong with the name anyway? In the end it didn't really matter, because Sam made the best bratwurst, sauerkraut and potato pancakes southeast of St. Louis, and Ella was a master at baking cheesecake and peanut bread, and most of the area's farmers would flock into Guardian on Friday nights just to eat some of the grub, so the name became nothing more than a good local joke. At this point, though, Toadstool and I might've renamed the place Sanctuary, because, thankfully, Sam 'n Ella's was air conditioned. When we walked in, I still didn't have a clue as to how I was going to convince Sam to let two kids he didn't even know use his phone to call long distance, but the second she saw us, Ella solved the problem for me. "Oh, you poor boy," she said, walking out from behind the counter with a towel in her hand. "What happened to you?" I might not have been able to figure out what she was going on about except that they had one of those bar-length mirrors behind the counter, and from that I caught a good look at myself. I hadn't completely been able to clean myself up after Gerd got done with me, and there was still dried blood on my face beneath my nose and around my mouth. What's more, some of the blood had dripped down to my shirt where the sweat had caused it to expand, so there was huge red-brown splotches on my white t-shirt. As Ella stood over me trying to wipe the blood off of my face, her peach-scented perfume assaulting my nose in a worse way than Gerd had, I had time to devise a story. I had always been able to lie on my feet, which was one reason why I was the Dreamer. "Uh--our car hit a tree down the road," I said, trying to act like I was woozy and out of it. "We had to--to walk into town to get some help." "Oh, my word. Is everyone all right?" By this time, the two or three people who had been sitting in the restaurant on that Saturday afternoon had gathered around us. "I--I think we're all right. But my brother's hurt kind of bad, he couldn't walk on his one leg. He sent us ahead for help." "How far down the road is he?" Sam asked. "About--about three miles, off on the bottom road there." Ella looked up at Sam. "Sam, why don't you go out and see what you can do." "Sure thing," Sam said, reaching in his trouser pockets for his truck keys. "Neal, why don't you come with me. If he's hurt bad enough we may need to do some maneuvering to get him back here." One of the farmers joined Sam and before I knew anything they were headed out to Sam's truck. That left me with Ella and an old, skinny lady that I could only imagine to be Neal's wife. "Ma'am," I said, and I tried to make my voice sound really weak now, "my mom's expecting us home. I don't know how to get in touch. . ." Ella had finished dabbing and was giving my face a quick look over. "Of course, you can use the phone. It's right over there behind the counter. Tell your mom that Sam is out there looking for your brother, and he'll make sure the boy's okay." Ella pointed me and Toadstool to the phone and left us alone, which kind of surprised me since, for all she knew, we could be calling anybody. Still, back in those days out in the country people were pretty trusting, as long as you were white and kept your hair short, at least, and me and Toadstool qualified on both counts. The second we were out of hearing range Toadstool was in my ear. "Are you stupid or what?" "What? I just got us a phone call." "Yeah? How long do you think it's going to take Sam before he realizes there's not a wrecked car on the bottom road?" "Long enough for me to make a phone call if you just shut up." While we were talking, I'd been able to fumble my home phone number around the rotary dial, and now the phone had started ringing on the other end. I was hoping that mom hadn't gone off in a desperate search for us and that she'd still be there. If she was, I could tell her to meet us down by the bridge and run out before Sam got back from the wild goose chase I'd sent him on. But God was against me that day, and instead a nine-year-old girl's voice answered the phone. "Hello." "Pill, where's mom?" "Who wants to know?" "It's your brother, stupid. Put mom on the phone." "Derek? I thought you were in Mississippi or something." "Not Derek. You know which brother I am." "Who are you talking to?" Toadstool whispered in a frantic tone. "Pill." "Oh, god." Pill was the name me and my friends had given my sister, Jill, and we both knew that, with her on the line, things weren't going to end well. We needed to get a message to mom and fast. With Pill, that wasn't going to happen. Where Derek was the oldest in the family and, with dad gone, considered by mom to be our shining hope, Pill was the youngest, skinny, frail and weak, and because of this mom let her get away with almost everything. She took good advantage of that. "Pill," I said, trying to make myself sound desperate without drawing Ella's notice, "listen, me and Toadstool are stuck down in Guardian. We need mom to drive down here and get us. Can you please put her on the phone." "Not really." "What do you mean, 'not really?'" "Doesn't sound like it's my problem." "Listen, this is serious. We're stuck down here and we don't have any way to get back. Now put mom on the phone. . ." "Can't. Don't want to." "You've got to be kidding me. I will murder you if you don't. . ." With that, the line went dead. She had just hung up on me and, just to prove that God truly did hate me, Sam came storming back into the restaurant at the same time. "What are you little punks up to. . .?" he bellowed as he entered through the door, the sound of his voice bouncing off of every surface in the place. "Sam, what in the world. . .?" Ella asked, inching closer to us but keeping her eyes on Sam. "Me and Neal just drove five miles down the bottom road and back and we didn't see a wreck, and we didn't see a damaged tree, either. I saw Gunderson and asked him about it and he said he'd seen nothing of a wreck on that road, and he's been driving back and forth on it all day. So what are you kids doing?" I didn't really feel like explaining myself, and as Sam had walked into the restaurant he'd moved away from the door, which gave me my break. One benefit of being small was that I was quick; I could move like lighting and the wind combined when I wanted to. Right then, I wanted to. So, paying no heed to whatever might become of Toadstool, I shot out from behind the counter and out the door and, being cooled off, headed as fast as I could back towards the bridge. Once I got there, not really having a plan and not knowing if Sam might not try to go after me, I ducked under the bridge and sat myself down in the weeds by the creek, not thinking of much at all. Before I could start the thinking process I heard that familiar huffing and puffing above me and, looking up, I saw Toadstool on the bridge, his shirt opened again and water pouring out of him in spite of the time he'd spent in the air conditioning. He wasn't really running, more like attempting to walk fast, but not really. "Hey," I half-whispered, half yelled at him, and, looking down and shaking his head, he came down under the bridge. "You are so totally gay," he said, not keeping his voice quiet at all. "Shut up," I said, still trying to whisper. "What are they doing up there?" "Not much of nothing. Sam just yelled at me to get out of his place, so I did. Nice plan, fag boy. They'd have probably helped us if you weren't so busy trying to be a genius." "Screw you, Toadstool. Are you coming up with any brilliant plans?" "Yeah. I could go back in time and go back to the restaurant and explain things to Sam. Oh, but I don't have a time machine. So I guess I'm all out of ideas." "You think they'd let us use the phone at the Four Corners?" "Oh, yeah. By this time on a Saturday, Larry File is just waking up from his drunk last night, which means he’s seriously hung over. Dealing with him would be worse than dealing with Gerd again. So we got two choices. We can either go door to door and see if someone in Guardian will let us call our moms, and you know how much people like letting strangers rack up long distance charges." "Yeah? What's your other choice?" Toadstool slumped a little bit and sighed, looking up at the bridge towards the road. "We can start to walk, and hope somebody nice gives us a ride." We stopped talking then and when we did I noticed how dead the air had gotten. With no traffic coming across the bridge there was almost no sound at all, no breeze and no animals, like it was too hot for anything to move. The sweat was trickling down my face and back, and now my shirt was completely soaked again thanks to all that running I’d done. The sun was high overhead and it was relentless, making everything feel like it was being baked in an oven. The walk didn't sound like a good idea, not at all, and the likelihood of us taking a ride after what we'd just gone through with Gerd, no matter how nice the person might be, was pretty slim. Still, we had to do something. "All right," I said, picking myself up from the weeds, "I guess we'd better get going."
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