Stick (24 page)

The man on the porch came into the living room and shut the door.

I fumbled in my back pocket for Bosten's wallet and handed Willie a twenty and two fives. “Thanks so much, Willie. I guess I should head out.” I strained at doing the math, trying to figure out how much money I had left, and whether it would be enough to get me to Aunt Dahlia's.

The older guy carried a black canvas duffel bag. He dropped it on the floor and went over to Willie's couch, where I had been watching TV most of the day. He had wild gray hair that made him look as though he'd been electrocuted, and he wore a dark wool CPO-type jacket that gave off a damp, sweaty odor.

“Well,” Willie said. “I'll   take you back to the station in the morning. It's Friday,             kid, and I feel like doing a little partying, if that's okay.”

What could I say?

I tried to think about how far it was back to the gas station.

“Oh. Um. Sure thing.”

Willie pulled two brown bottles from the sack. He had one of those bottle openers that had been bolted right into the kitchen wall. He let the caps fall and roll across the linoleum.

“Want one,     kid?”

“No. No thanks, Willie.”

I glanced at the man on the couch. He didn't say anything more than a grunted and unintelligible something when Willie handed a beer across the coffee table to him.

Then Willie put a full six-pack on the table and sat down, pulling the chair across the carpet so he was close enough to grab them.

“Oh,” he said, “and this          is my buddy, Brock.”

The old man looked at me and nodded. His eyes were sunken and stained yellow.

“And the kid's name is Bosten,” Willie added.

“Hi,” I said.

“I been to Boston. Around       twenty years ago, I think,” Brock said.

I didn't care enough to correct him. I just stood there, wondering if I should sit or leave, thinking about how many times in his life Bosten had heard comments about baked beans and tea parties, or the Red Sox.

Willie emptied his beer and took out another bottle. He opened it on the edge of a key he wedged into his palm. He dropped the cap on the rug.

“And you'll need to       get your shit out of the room. Brock's renting it tonight.”

I didn't really understand what was going on.

I still don't know for sure exactly what happened that night.

The old man looked at me like he was waiting for me to say something.

“Okay.” I started toward the room. “Maybe I can sleep on the couch.”

“No,” Willie said. “We're going to be          partying. You can stay in my room.”

“Oh.”

Brock took off his coat and dropped it on the floor at the end of the couch as though marking a territory where he didn't want any kids hanging around.

His party territory, I guessed.

It wasn't like I had that much “shit” to clear out of the room, anyway. I un-carefully stuffed what I had out on the bed into my suitcase and carried it through the doorway into Willie's bedroom.

“Maybe I should just get out of your way. It's not that far of a walk back to my car.”

“It's five      miles,” Willie said. “Relax.”

Brock looked at me and then at Willie. I could tell he was quietly trying to make some kind of a decision about me, and I found out soon enough.

Willie said, “He's       all     right.”

Brock tweezered two fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out some little folded squares of white paper. He spread them out, like playing cards, in front of him on the glass tabletop.

Willie tapped my forearm with his beer bottle. “Hey,                 Bosten, will you do me a favor?”

I was already confused enough about what was going on. I imagined all the possible unreasonable things Willie was getting ready to ask me to do.

“Sure.”

“Put     some music on, will you? And then        go over there to that first drawer by the sink and grab me a couple razor blades. They're right in front.”

“Uh. Okay.”

I turned Willie's stereo on. It sat on three overturned plastic milk crates beside the bar. Buffalo Springfield. A little old, but I liked them. I thought of all the times I'd watched Bosten sing and dance around to “Mr. Soul.”

Is it strange I should change? I don't know, why don't you ask her?

The razor blades were each wrapped in thick paper. Single-edge utility blades, right where Willie said they'd be. I still didn't have any idea what he wanted them for.

As I picked them up, I thought about Paul Buckley. I wondered if he was okay.

Brock opened up one of his paper squares and dumped a small pile of white powdery stuff out on the glass table. I gave Willie the blades and watched as he unwrapped one of them.

Brock caught me staring, my mouth hanging open.

“Haven't you ever        seen coke before?” he said. “Where'd you    grow up, anyway? In a      monastery?”

Two things ran through my head: First, I didn't think Brock actually wanted to hear me answer those questions, and, no, I had never seen coke before. I knew what it was, though. Kind of.

I shook my head and swallowed.

Willie started chopping the coke, finer and finer, with his razor blade. It made an interesting sound, the crispness of the granules, the high-pitched whine of the blade against the glass as Willie scraped the powder into a perfect pile.

I sat down on the carpet with my hands behind me and my knees bent.

“You want to        try some,         kid?” Willie asked.

I felt my eyes get wide. I shook my head. I thought that stuff killed people, and here were these two grown men doing it right in front of me like they were sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows or something.

“What's it do to you?”

Brock said, “It makes you       feel new.       Give it a shot, punk.”

I didn't want to feel new.

At fourteen, I was tired of feeling new.

“No thanks. I really don't do anything.”

“I bet you do          a few things.” Brock said, “Especially when no one's looking.” Then he and Willie both laughed, like they knew something about me that I didn't. It made me feel a little creepy.

Willie ran the blade out across the glass and separated a wide white line of coke from the pile. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the twenty I'd just given him. He rolled the bill up into a tube and offered it to Brock.

I guess cocaine manners prescribed that Brock was obliged to say a silent “after you” to Willie, just by waving his hand graciously, almost with a religious weight to the motion. Willie didn't protest, anyway. I had never seen anything like it. It fascinated me and terrified me, all at the same time. But here I was, floating on the water.

Helpless.

So what else could I do?

I watched.

Willie put one end of my twenty into his nostril, plugged the other side with a straightened index finger, and snorted half the line right up into his nose. He closed his eyes, sniffed in again, and looked at me with a strange and pleased expression on his face. Then he finished it off through the other nostril.

They took turns.

Brock and Willie did the same thing, over and over, through two packets of Brock's coke. They kept staring at me, too, which made me feel like I was in the wrong place, because all I did was watch them as though it was some kind of movie.

By the time they had emptied the first six-pack of beer, Willie licked his finger and ran it over the surface of the table. He was sweating. So was Brock. I thought it was cold in the houseboat.

I got up and turned the record over.

I watched as Willie rubbed his finger all around on his gums, the way you'd brush your teeth if you didn't have a toothbrush.

I realized I didn't bring my toothbrush with me when I left home.

Willie made his fingertip white with the cocaine again. Just when I turned around from his record player, he stood up and came over to me. Willie put one hand behind my head, the way you'd hold a girl if you were going to make out with her, and before I could do anything about it, he began pushing his finger into my mouth.

Brock sat on the couch, laughing. “Oh       yeah! Kid's first coke!”

I twisted away from Willie, but it was too late. His finger swiped all around inside my mouth. I thought about biting him, but I was too scared.

It tasted like poison.

It tasted like something you'd use to clean up spilled paint.

I shoved Willie back.

“What the fuck, Willie? What the fuck are you doing?”

And already my mouth felt like it was detaching from my face.

Willie laughed. “That's good     shit,           isn't it, kid?”

Brock laughed. “Make    him do    a line!    Let's hold him down and make him do it!”

I didn't know what to do. My heart was racing, and I honestly thought I was going to die. But part of my head was telling me that I'd just watched these two idiots snort up a sandbox full of this stuff and they weren't dead yet.

“Leave me the fuck alone! Why the fuck did you do that?”

I spit on Willie's floor, tried to get all that crap out of my mouth, but it wasn't going anywhere.

As Willie and Brock laughed uncontrollably, I stormed past them into Willie's room and slammed the door behind me.

*   *   *

I heard them laughing at me
in the other room.

I sat on the edge of Willie's bed

with my face in my hands.

My head was on fire with words.

I had to slow myself down.

I had to slow

myself

down.

*   *   *

They kept laughing.

Someone changed the music.

I heard Brock calling me a pussy faggot.

He told Willie

to make me come out there and suck their dicks.

Willie said no.

Brock said he was going to

come in the room then and force me to do it.

He said the kid should pay us for letting him stay here.

Willie said leave the kid alone, he's messed up.

Then there was pounding on the houseboat's door.

I heard more voices.

More men outside in Willie's living room.

This was Willie's party.

Laughing.

Music.

I just sat there.

My heart was beating so hard I thought it would

break my ribs.      

I wanted to leave, but there was no way out.

I wanted to leave.

I didn't move.

The noise of the party grew and grew.

Maybe an hour later

maybe it was just a minute

a minute when my heart beat an hour of life away

they began fighting about something.

The old man opened my door.

Smoke followed him in.

Then he closed the door and it was dark.

He said, boy, take off your shirt.

I said no.

He said you got to pay for staying here.

I said Willie told me I didn't have to.

Brock said fuck Willie.

He grabbed me and threw me down on the floor.

He pulled Bosten's wallet out of my pocket.

He took everything I had in there.

The old man said one way or another you're paying.

I said I need that money to get to California.

He said when you run out of money

you can start giving five-dollar blowjobs, I guess.

Want to make some money, kid?

I was crying.

I said fuck you

and he left.

Not long after that, someone started shooting

in the living room.      

There were five gunshots.

I did the math.

Then it was as quiet as death.

SUTTON

I had to leave.

I waited until I couldn't stand it anymore.

I was shaking so hard it made me sick.

And sometime during the wait, I desperately needed to pee, so I just did it in the corner of Willie's bedroom. It made a thick sound in the carpet where it pooled up, and I could feel its warmth and smell it. It smelled like the locker room after Mr. Lloyd's gym class.

I took a deep breath and turned the doorknob. It didn't make a sound, but how would I know, anyway? My pulse was a roaring tornado trapped inside my head. I pulled open the door.

The first thing that hit me was the cold. The front door of the houseboat stood open.

The glass table where Willie and Brock had done their coke was broken at one end. It looked like crystal teeth. There was a bullet hole in the center of it, too. Willie's turntable spun around, but the arm had been flipped up. It pointed directly at the ceiling, like it was saying, “Look       up there,    kid.”

And the room smelled like blood. Everyone knows what blood smells like; and when there's a lot of it, it kind of makes you want to throw up.

The old man who'd stolen my money was stretched out on the couch. It looked like he was sitting in a puddle of blood, and his eyes were frozen open, looking across the room, just watching the mute record that spun and spun on Willie's turntable. I couldn't see any mark on him, but there was this odd color under his skin; and even standing away, on the other side of the room where I was, I could almost feel how cold he was.

If he still had my money, it would be in his back pocket, down somewhere in that pool of blood on the sofa cushion. I didn't care how much money it was. I wasn't going to touch that old man again.

Willie was in the rental room, the one where I'd slept without paying the night before. I saw only his feet through the open doorway. He was facedown on the floor, missing a shoe, and had obviously stepped in blood with his white sock.