The Way Home

TWO

The first time Chris took a charge, for loitering and possession of marijuana, he was all nerves, standing in this room they had at the 2D station, waiting for his father to come and take him home. He was expecting his pops to spaz on him, put a finger up in his face, give him the lecture about responsibility and choices, maybe make some threats. But his father entered that room and, first thing, hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. It surprised Chris and, because there was a police officer in the room, embarrassed him. If his father was soft like that, someone might get the idea that Chris was soft, too.

“I told you not to touch him, sir,” said the police officer, but Thomas Flynn did not apologize.

Chris should have expected his father to support him. If he had thought about it, he would have realized that his father had always taken his side against teachers and school administrators in the past, including those times when Chris had been in the wrong. Thomas Flynn had even physically challenged a security guy at Chris’s middle school back when Chris started getting in trouble. The security guard had said, “Your boy needs to see a psychiatrist, somethin. He’s not right.” And his father said, “If I want your opinion, young man, I’ll kick it out your ass.” His father had a temper, and he was also in denial about who Chris was. But Chris knew who he was, even then.

It came to him one morning, lying in bed, after his mother had woken him up to go to school. He was in the seventh grade, thirteen years old. It occurred to him that he didn’t have to get up and go to school if he didn’t want to. That his parents couldn’t force him to go. They couldn’t, in fact, force him to do anything. Most kids would do what their parents said because they were the parents and that was how it worked, but Chris did not feel the way those other kids felt, not anymore. It was like something in his brain got switched off at the same time that something else, something more exciting, had been ignited. He still thought of his mom and dad as his parents, but he was no longer interested in pleasing them or doing what they thought was right. He didn’t care.

His father’s attitude changed after Chris began to get in trouble time and time again. It was partly the repetition of the incidents that wore his father down, but it was also the nature of them.

Chris liked to fight. He wasn’t an honors or AP kid, and being good at fighting was a way of showing that he was someone, too. If it was a fair fight, meaning he wasn’t picking on a retard or a weakling, then it was on, and someone was about to get hurt.

He rationalized robbery, too. If someone was stupid enough to leave cash in a locker, or have designer shades or a cell phone visible inside a parked car, then he was going to break into that locker or car and help his self.

He had bad luck, though, and he got caught. His old man would come to pick him up from the school office or the police station, and each time, his father’s face was more disappointed and less forgiving. Chris wasn’t trying to hurt his parents, exactly. But in his mind it was written like this: They have unreasonable expectations for me. They don’t realize who I am. I am hard and I like to get high. I don’t want to be their good boy and I don’t want the things they want for me. If they can’t face that, it’s their problem, not mine.

“Why, Chris?” said his father, driving him back from the Mexican restaurant, Tuco’s, where he’d been caught vandalizing and stealing from cars. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you doing this?” His father’s voice was hoarse, and it looked to Chris that he was close to desperation.

“I don’t know. I can’t help it, I guess.”

“You’re throwing it all away. You’ve quit on everything, and you get high all the time. You’ve got a police record, and your grades are… they’re shit, Chris. Other kids are studying for the SATs and looking at colleges, and you’re breaking into cars. For what? What could you possibly need that I haven’t given you? I bought you a car; why in the world would you want to damage someone else’s?” Flynn’s fingers were white on the steering wheel. “You live in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in Washington, in a nice house. You’re trying to act like someone you’re not. Why? What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m me. That SUV you bought me, it’s fine and all that, but I didn’t ask you for it. Far as my grades go, what’s the point? I’m not going to college. Let’s be real.”

“Oh, so now you’re not considering college?”

“I’m not going. I don’t see any reason to go, because I’m not smart enough. Look, accept me like this or don’t. Either way, I’m going to be who I am.”

This was before the final incident, which started in the lot behind the drugstore on the west side of Connecticut Avenue, up by the Avalon Theater.

It was a midsummer night, and Chris and his friend Jason Berg, whom everyone but Jason’s parents and teachers called Country, were walking out of the drugstore with a vial of Visine they had purchased and a bunch of candy and gum packs they had stuffed in their pockets and stolen. They had been drinking beer and smoking some bud, and were laughing at something that struck them as funny because they were high.

A pound of weed was stashed in the back of Chris’s vehicle, under a blanket. They had bought it earlier in the evening from a connection on the D.C. side of Takoma and were planning to sell most of it off to their peers and keep an ounce for themselves. Jason had an electronic scale, and their intention was to bag out the marijuana the next day at his house while his parents were at work.

Jason was a big kid, tall and muscled up. He had a buzz cut and still wore braces. People thought he was stupid. He had the mouth-breathing, shallow-eyed look of an idiot, a lumbering walk, a stoner’s chuckle, and he was into NASCAR and professional wrestling. Because of those interests and because he was white, the black kids at school had dubbed him Country.

Jason did nothing to discourage the impression others had formed of him. Truth was, he wasn’t stupid in the least. His grades were middling because he didn’t try during tests or turn in homework, but he had scored very high on his SATs, despite the fact that he had gotten massively baked the night before the exams. He was the son of a Jewish attorney who was a partner in one of the most prominent firms in the District, but he kept this and his intelligence hidden from the kids at school. The hard yahoo stoner was a preferable costume to him over the smart, privileged Jew.

Chris Flynn was of Irish Catholic extraction, shorter than Jason but not by much, and broad in the chest. He too wore his blond hair close to the scalp. He was fair skinned, green eyed, and had a lazy, charming smile. His one physical flaw was the vertical scar creasing the right side of his upper lip, acquired when he walked into an elbow during a pickup game that had gotten out of hand at the Hamilton Rec in 16th Street Heights. Chris liked the scar, and so did the females. He was handsome, but the scar told anyone who suspected it that he was no pretty boy. It made him look tough.

He was tough. He and Jason had proven it on the basketball courts and in situations involving hands. They did not hang with other white kids, the skateboarders and punk rockers and intellectuals who populated their high school, and were proud of the fact that they had earned respect, mostly, from the young black men who were bused in from the other side of town. Whether they were liked or not was beside the point to them. Everyone knew that Chris and Jason were on the edge, and that they could ball and fight.

“I think that Chinese girl behind the counter saw us pocket this stuff,” said Chris, as he and Jason headed for Chris’s SUV.

“What’s Ling Ho gonna do? Get up after us?”

As they neared the Isuzu, Chris saw a group of three boys getting into a late-model Volvo station wagon parked down the row of spaces. One of them gave Chris a look, glancing at the old Trooper with the safari roof rack, and smiled in an arrogant way.

“Is he muggin me?” said Chris.

Jason stopped and hard-eyed the kid, who was now slipping behind the wheel of the Volvo. “I’ll drop him if he does, son.”

“They must be private school,” said Chris. “You know those bitches can’t go.”

Chris and Jason, public-school kids, imagined themselves to be more blue-collar than the many kids in Ward 3 who attended private high schools. For Jason Berg it was an affectation, as his father was in the top 1 percent of earners. Chris, too, was living in a financially comfortable home environment, but he’d inherited the chip on his shoulder from Thomas Flynn.

Chris and Jason got into the SUV. Chris turned the ignition while Country messed with the radio. Despite his moniker, Country listened exclusively to hip-hop and go-go, and found something he could tolerate on KYS. It was a Destiny’s Child thing that was popular and bogus, and they talked about that for a minute, and then Chris pulled down on the transmission arm, still talking to Jason and looking at him, and reversed the SUV. Both of them were jolted by a collision. They heard and felt the impact at the same time, and Chris said, “Shit.”

He looked over his shoulder. They had hit the Volvo, passing behind them, and the three boys were getting out of the right-side doors because the Isuzu was up against the driver’s side. Chris cut the engine and took a deep breath.

“You hit the right car, at least,” said Jason with a grin.

“My father’s gonna go off.”

“What now?”

“ ’Bout to see what the damage is,” said Chris. “You stay in here.”

“Sure?”

“Positive. I don’t want no trouble tonight. Remember, we got some weight in the back. I’m serious.”

“Holler if you need me.”

“Right.” Chris left the keys in the ignition and got out of the SUV.

He walked toward the boys, now grouped in front of the Volvo. The largest of them was wide and strong, a football player from the looks of him, bulked up in the weight room, but he had nonthreatening eyes. The driver was Chris’s size, prep school definitely from the square-hair, clean-shaved looks of him, and standing with his chest puffed out, which meant he was insecure and probably scared. The third kid, small and unformed, had pulled out a cell phone and was talking into it as he walked away. After sizing them all up quickly, the way boys and men do, Chris decided with some satisfaction that there wasn’t one of them he could not take. Knowing this chilled him some and allowed him, for the moment, to stay even and cool.

“My bad,” said Chris, facing the driver, the boy who’d given him the look. “Guess I wasn’t payin attention.”

“You guess,” said the driver. “Look what you did to my car.” Annoyed, not giving Chris any slack, not giving him a “That’s all right” or an “It happens.”

Chris shrugged and his eyes were dead as he looked at the driver. “Said it was my bad.”

Chris checked out the Volvo, saw that the left front quarter panel and the edge of the driver’s door carried a dent. He then looked at the bumper of the Isuzu, which was not scratched but showed a bit of gold paint that had come off the Volvo’s body.

Chris thought of his old man, and the day he had brought the used SUV home and presented it to Chris. It was a corny-looking vehicle, the old, boxy Trooper, which his father said had style and looked “cool.” Nerdy was more like it, but whatever. Chris would have preferred an Impala SS or Buick Grand National, but he took it. One thing his father was right about, the Isuzu was a tank. Shoot, it had put a hurtin on a Volvo.

“Somethin funny?” said the driver.

“Nah. I was just… look, let me give you my in surance card.”

“My in surance caahd,” said the small one, having rejoined the group and slipped his cell into his pocket. The football player looked down at his feet.

Chris’s jaw tightened as he drew his wallet and found the card in his father’s name. He held it out for the driver, but the driver did not take it.

“Show it to the police,” said the driver. “They’re on the way.”

“That’s who your boy called on his cell?” said Chris.

“Yeah.”

“Wasn’t no need to do that.” Chris replaced the card in his wallet, feeling his heart tick up a beat. “We supposed to exchange information.”

“We ’posed to,” said the small one. “Look at him. His eyes are glassy, Alex. He’s fucked up.”

“How do I know if that card is real?” said the driver, with that same smart look he had given Chris when he’d mugged him and his vehicle.

“Leave it alone, Alex,” said the football player to the driver.

“See, why you got to say that?” said Chris, staring at the driver, regretting that he had asked the question, not wanting the boy to speak, not trusting what he would do if the boy kept pushing it.

Adults were now standing in the lot, watching.

You want to see some drama? I’ll give you something to look at.

Chris felt himself move his weight to his back foot, as his father had taught him to do long ago.

Punch with your shoulder, not your arm. Pivot your hip into the punch. Punch through your target, Chris.

“I don’t have to tell you anything, Ace,” said the driver. “Just talk to the police.”

“ Alex,” said the football player.

“Okay,” said Chris, his face hot as fire. “I guess there’s no need for words.”

He threw a deep punch and it connected. The driver’s nose felt spongy at the point of contact, and it shot blood as he fell to the ground.

Chris did not look at the football player but turned to the small one who had jumped back a step. Chris almost laughed. He said, “You’re too little,” and turned and walked back to his vehicle. A couple of the adults were shouting at him but not moving to stop him, and he did not turn his head.

He got behind the wheel. He turned the key in the ignition. Jason was laughing. Colored lights had begun to strobe the parking lot, and Chris looked left and saw the 2D cruiser enter the lot from Morrison Street, and then another one behind it.

There was no right or reason. Chris’s head was a riot of energy.