The Summer I Died

CHAPTER 8

By midday we’d shot so many holes in the cans they were unusable even as targets. At twenty yards my aim had gotten so I could hit my mark about seventy percent of the time. Tooth’s accuracy was a much better. Even drunk he could shoot the ass hairs off a gnat. After we’d grown bored, he wobbled around picking up the empty shells.

“I can reuse these,” he told me.

I wasn’t so sure homemade bullets were a good idea, but for all I knew the ones we’d shot hadn’t come from a store anyway.

We rolled another joint and sat and looked out over the forest. Not much had changed in the past couple hours, except maybe some clouds had reshaped themselves. Off in the distance, a bleak gray was spreading over the blue sky and I figured by supper time we’d be in for rain.

Tooth passed me the joint and said, “Want to go to O’Conner’s tonight?”

I sucked in the stale smoke and coughed, then drummed my fist on my chest, apelike. “I’d just as soon not go back there.”

“Yeah, but they’re the only ones that don’t check IDs.”

Getting carded was the least of my worries. The last time we’d ventured into O’Conner’s was on Christmas break and I’d ended up with a fat lip and piss-drenched pants and Tooth had ended up with a broken nose. O’Conner’s was a local hangout for some bored skinheads who had nothing to do and no one to take it out on, these parts being primarily white. As a result, an unsuspecting soul who happened to remark about a film starring a black man was like a gift from the gods.

No sooner had I mentioned the Wesley Snipe film Blade to Tooth than a fist the size of the moon hauled me out of my chair and brought me face to face with a suspender-wearing gorilla with two lightning bolts tattooed on his skull.

“We don’t discuss eggplants in here,” he breathed. “You want to proliferate the spreading disease that is the black man, you do it somewhere else.”

Had I been alone, I would have thanked the man for leaving my neck in one piece and slinked out the door like a frightened mouse. Unfortunately, I was with Tooth, who never passes up an opportunity to land me in jail or a hospital bed. He came around the back of the skinhead and put his arm around the guy like they were best buddies.

“I say we lynch this little fucker,” he said.

Naturally, my eyes went wide and I hoped Lightning Bolt Head understood the joke. He gave Tooth a serious stare, as if he might pick him up and use him as a toothpick. The owner of the bar came over, carrying a golf club, and told us to knock it off or he was calling the cops. But like hyenas trapping two lion cubs, the other skinheads gathered around to support their friend-who could have easily taken both Tooth and me with one finger.

“We’re just talking movies,” Lightning Bolt Head said.

The other patrons in the bar, mostly drunks and a few college students home on break, stopped all conversation and started salivating for blood. Normally, I’d have been just as eager for some violence, but my heart just wasn’t in it this time, what with my face likely to be the first target and all.

As the owner walked back behind the bar, Tooth gave me his famous glance, the same one he’d shot me in the liquor store, the one that always made my scrotum shrivel, and I suddenly knew I was very likely leaving the bar with missing teeth. It was kindergarten all over again. Tooth was setting up for a distraction and I was going to do something on the sly. But what? There was nothing to swipe from these guys and I sure as hell wasn’t going to blindside one of them.

“So what do you say?” Tooth continued. “Let’s take this nigger-lover out back and show him what it means to live in the white man’s world. Maybe we can get points on our community service, eh?”

“I know you,” Lightning Bolt Head said. “You’re that guy who got run over by his daddy. What do they call you, Mouth or something?”

“Tooth.”

“Yeah, Tooth, nice name. Well, listen here, Tooth, why don’t you fuck off before I stamp my name on your forehead.”

He raised his other fist and proudly displayed a three-fingered silver ring that was more brass knuckles than jewelry. Beveled in reverse were the words Brody was here. I almost laughed. Almost.

“Nice ring,” Tooth replied, “I got one, too. It says ‘Once you go black you never go back.’ Put it right where I had that epiphany. Want to see it?” He pretended to unzip his fly, and it was at this moment I realized Tooth had stepped over the line of safety. We were in for it now. As the skins stood in stunned silence, waiting to see if Tooth had a cock ring on, I slowly put my foot against the back of Lightning Bolt Head’s knee-and prayed.

“That’s it,” the skinhead yelled as he adjusted the ring on his hand for optimal stamping, “we’re all going outside.”

Tooth snapped his arm back, fist balled into a battering ram, and I shoved my foot forward. Lightning Bolt Head stumbled as his leg gave out, and in that instant Tooth hit him square in the face. The force of the blow slammed his head back into mine and split my lip. A flash of white erupted under my eyelids and I felt myself falling. Then everything kind of exploded, as if a pack of wolves had been released into a hen house. Fists came from every direction, combat boots flashed at eye level. Yelling and screaming and bottles breaking. Grunts and gouts of blood spitting through the air. Taking advantage of my new position on the ground, I began crawling toward the door over shards of green and brown bottle. I was inches away from salvation when a dozen hands reached down and yanked me up and I knew, without a doubt, that I was a dead man. I pissed myself.

The next thing I saw was a golf club slicing the air and bodies flying this way and that. Whoosh! I ducked a swing that would have made a hole-in-one in my cheek and came up to find Tooth in front of me. His face was awash in blood and his bridge had been punched out.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here!” I yelled.

“Holdth on, I woft my tees.”

We bent down as skinheads careened around us, bleeding and moaning. Cheers went up from the other patrons, whose expectations had been generously fulfilled. I found his bridge under a barstool, covered in a glob of ichor that reminded me of a stewed tomato. I thrust it in his hand and nearly retched as he shoved it in his mouth. He yanked me up and we bolted out the front door and sped away.

And that was how my last trip to O’Conner’s had ended.

As I looked at the encroaching grayness crawling toward us over the mountains, I passed the joint back to Tooth and thought, no, I’m not particularly interested in going to O’Conner’s tonight. I told this to Tooth.

“You’re afraid those skinhead jerkoffs will be there,” he said. “Man, when are you gonna get a backbone?”

“I have a backbone, and it’s straight and in one piece. I kind of like it that way.”

“You kind of make me sick sometimes.”

I wasn’t expecting that. But then again, he was drunk and he was unpredictable when drunk. I didn’t take his bait though; if he wanted to give me shit about not wanting to fight he could work it into the conversation on his own.

Man, he was pissing me off.

“You never take any chances,” he continued. “How long are you gonna stay in this hick town, doing nothing but reading comic books? When was the last time you got laid?”

“I get laid.”

“No, you don’t. Shit, you must pull your dick as often as I take a drink.”

“I’d have my dick in my hand right now if that were the case.”

“Man, don’t you feel suffocated here?”

“The university isn’t like that, there’s opportunity, cool people. You’d know that if you came to visit.”

“There’s no point. All college girls want to do is talk about how they’re going to be lawyers and doctors. None of them want to rape me like a bitch in heat, like the Internet says.”

“It’s not like that. Mostly they’re all hippies, listen to reggae music, hang out and let their leg hair grow. And they’re so sheltered, like they all grew up in communes. These girls came in my dorm room one night while I was watching Evil Dead and they asked what it was. Can you believe that? They’d never seen Evil Dead. I just laughed.”

“You elitist jackass. You should have fucked them.”

“Who said I didn’t?” I replied, annoyed at his lack of faith in me. Though the truth was they had walked into my room by mistake and asked the one question and left. I didn’t know too many girls, at least ones I could relate to. There was one girl living in a room down the hall who was very cute, small nose, short brown hair, had a picture of Ewan McGregor on her door in his Obi Wan Kenobi costume. I liked her, and we’d talked briefly, but I learned she had a boyfriend and not a very nice one at that. She left soon after anyway. Tooth was right-I pulled my dick a lot.

“Fuck, I need to get laid,” he said. “It’s been over two weeks.”

“Who did you get with?” I asked.

He took another pull on the joint and handed it to me. His eyes were red and clouded, and I doubted he could drive anymore, which meant I had better start sobering up or we’d be camping in the mountains like a couple of cro-mags.

“Michelle Murphy.”

“Bullshit,” I yelled. I handed the joint back to him and blew smoke in his face. Michelle Murphy had been every boy’s dream back in high school, the kind of girl you would have given all your paper route money for, the kind of girl you jerked off to on a nightly basis. She was also the kind that made a big deal about her faith and her virginity, which made her all the more desirable.

“Yup. I was at O’Conner’s and she came in with some dude. I hadn’t seen her since high school so I asked what she’d been up to. I don’t remember what she said but her breath could have sterilized the bottom of my shoe. That girl can drink. She starts rubbing on me and telling me she always thought I was a cool guy, which is horseshit, but I didn’t care. Anyway, she grabs my dick and says to follow her home. I said, ‘Who’s this yahoo?’ pointing to the guy she was with. She said, ‘Boston, meet New Hampshire.’ Then she leaned in real close, put her lips on my ear and said, ‘He was round one, you’re round two.’ So I went home with her and damn, that little girl is all grown up I tell you. I thought it was a little weird how the guy sat in the corner and watched, but hey, it didn’t affect my performance none.”

I pitched a rock into the abyss of trees and stood up. “You’re a fucking liar,” I said. “I’m starving, let’s go to Bobtail and grab a burger.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You think what you want, all I know is the devil’s gonna high five me when we meet. Aw, fuck it, a burger sounds good.”

We walked back down the path, which was now so thick with mosquitoes it was like walking through a stinging fog. Tooth put the gun back in the car.

And that was when we heard the scream.