This Boy's Life (18 page)

“In a while,” I said.

“I think we should go now.”

“In a while.”

One of the Ballard boys offered Arthur a place in line but he shook his head and turned away. He was still waiting when I got off the ride, and he waited again when the Ballard boys and I attached ourselves to another line. He waited the whole afternoon, following us from one ride to the next. He watched me stand treat at the refreshment stand, gaily peeling bills off my wad When we headed toward the midway he followed us, and came up to me again while one of the Ballard boys was throwing darts.

“I thought we were going to Alaska,” he said.

“We are.”

“Yeah, but when?”

“Look, we’re going, okay? Jeez. Just hold your horses.”

I threw some darts myself. I tossed rings. I pitched baseballs at weighted milk bottles. I tried my strength. And then I stopped by the Blackout booth.

Blackout was an unfamiliar game to me, but it looked like a snap. For a quarter you got a board with several sections marked out on it and three metal disks etched with symbols. If the symbols on a disk matched up in certain ways with the symbols on a section, you could lay the disk over the section. You received points according to the configuration of the disks on the board, and the sum of these points entitled you to prizes arranged in tiers against the back of the stall: ashtrays, paperweights, Kewpie dolls, porcelain bulldogs on the lowest tier; baseball mitts, stuffed animals, lighters shaped like pistols, clock radios, stiletto knives, ID bracelets on the next; and so on up to the topmost tier, where they kept the big prizes. Portable TVs. Binoculars. Cameras. Gold pinky rings set with diamonds. Diamond necklaces on gold chains, draped casually among the other prizes. Gold watches. And, attached to each of these prizes by a ribbon, a rolled-up one-hundred-dollar bill.

The two men behind the counter saw us eyeing the prizes. Smoke and Rusty, their names were. Rusty was thin and nervous. Smoke was a fat smiling guy with gaps between his teeth. It turned out that Smoke had been a Scout himself, so for
auld lang
syne he let each of us have a free game. Rusty tried to talk him out of it, but Smoke insisted. It was just as easy as it looked. Two of the Ballard boys won paperweights, and I racked up enough points for an ID bracelet. Rusty was getting it down for me when Smoke happened to mention that if we wanted another chance he’d let us keep the points we’d already earned and apply them toward a bigger prize. The Ballard boys had no money so they took their ashtrays, but I shelled out a quarter and told Smoke to deal. This time I came close to what I needed for the clock radio. “Can I keep the points again?” I asked.

Smoke and Rusty looked at each other. “No way,” Rusty said. “The boss’ll kill us.”

“Fuck the boss,” Smoke said. “The boss ain’t here.” Smoke set me up again. I thought I’d won the points I needed but Smoke said, “Too bad, Jack. Star Straddle.”

“Star Straddle?”

“Right. Star Straddle. See this star here? You got one on that section too. Means you have to straddle. Straddle’s minus forty. You damn near got her, though, Jack buddy.”

I asked if I could try again.

Smoke leaned over the counter and peered up and down the midway. “I don’t see him coming. How about it?” he said to Rusty.

“Okay, but hurry it up,” Rusty said. “Our ass is grass if he catches us.”

“You better do quadruplets,” Smoke told me.

“Quadruplets?” I had my wallet open. Smoke plucked out a one and said, “That’s the idea. You get four times as many points this way. Kinda speeds things up.”

I went way over what I needed for the clock radio. I was almost up to the binoculars. Smoke whooped, but Rusty sucked in his cheeks. “You trying to give everything away?” he said.

“Can I do quadruplets again?” I asked.

Smoke said I could. He also said I could play two boards if I wanted, and the second board would have the same number of points as the one I was playing now. That would give me a chance at two big prizes instead of just one.

“Goddamnit, Smoke,” Rusty said.

I was staring into my wallet. Smoke pulled out a couple of ones and dealt me six disks off the stack, three to each board. The Ballard boys pressed around to see how I’d made out. “I got it!” I yelled.

Smoke shook his head. “Almost, buddy. Moon Forfeit. Moon Forfeit should cost you fifty points but I think we can let it go at thirty. Whaddya say, Rusty?”

Rusty grumbled. Finally he said okay. At Smoke’s suggestion I opened another board and upped the stakes from quadruplets to double-quadruplets.

“Watch for the boss,” Smoke said.

“Get a move on,” Rusty said.

“Shit,” Smoke said, “Texas Sandtrap. You almost had it, Jack.”

The Ballard boys cheered me on. I opened two more boards and played all five for double-quads. My score rose on Carolina Snowflakes and Wizard Wheels, then fell again on Banana Splits, Lonely Hearts, Black Diamonds. I left my wallet on the counter and Smoke took what I owed as he dealt the disks. I was just a couple of points away from winning the whole top shelf when Smoke pushed the wallet back to me. “You’re a little short, Jackson.”

It was empty.

I knew the Ballard boys didn’t have any money. Arthur was watching me from the small crowd that had gathered around the booth, but I knew he didn’t have any money either. I asked Smoke if I could have one last deal.

“Sorry, Jack. No pay, no play.”

“Just one? Please?”

His eyes went past me. He smiled at the the kids watching. “You saw it happen right here,” he said. “Man almost walked off with the store. You there, Carrot-top—that’s right, you—don’t be shy, come on up, first game’s on the house. Used to be a Scout myself.”

“No free games!” Rusty said. “The boss’ll kill us.”

“Please, Smoke,” I said. Still smiling, he shuffled the disks. He didn’t exactly ignore me; I wasn’t even there.

“Here,” Rusty said, and shoved something at me. “Take a ride or something.”

It was a stuffed animal, a big pink pig with black trotters and a ring in its nose. I carried it up the midway, walking with the Ballard boys but unable to talk for the thickness in my throat. Sounds reached me from a distance. I floated without consciousness of movement. We walked here and there. At some point the Ballard boys climbed on a ride together and I lost them. I never even got their addresses.

 

AFTER THE PARK closed I stood by the gate with some other Scouts from my troop. Except for me, they had driven down to Seattle that morning in groups of five and six with parents who had relatives they could visit until it was time to drive home. Dwight and I had come down by ourselves.

While we waited to get picked up I tried to persuade Arthur to drive back with me and Dwight. I knew that Dwight would be drunk, and I didn’t want to be alone with him. But Arthur wouldn’t talk to me. As I spoke he looked away. I begged him shamelessly and at last he said, “Why should I?”

I said, “I’d do it for you.”

“Hah,” he said. But it was true, and he knew it. After a while he said, “Outstanding performance, Wolff. Truly outstanding.”

We were among the last to go. When I saw the car coming I held the pig out to Arthur. I had not been able to think of an explanation for it. “Here,” I said. “You can have it.”

“What do I want that thing for?”

“Come on, take it. Please.”

He said, “Well, we’re being very polite tonight, aren’t we?” But he took it. And that was what Dwight stared at as we walked toward him through the blaze of the headlights, this glowing pink pig carried by the sissy Arthur Gayle. And as if he knew how Dwight would describe the sight later on, Arthur, who despised him, smirked at Dwight, and wriggled and pranced every step of the way.

W
hen I got home from Concrete one night there was a big dog sleeping on the floor of the utility room. It was an ugly dog. Its short yellow coat was bare in patches, and one ear hung in pennant-like shreds. It had a pink, almost hairless tail. As I began to walk past, the dog came awake. Its eyes were yellow. At first it just looked at me, but when I moved again it gave a low growl. I yelled for someone to come.

Dwight stuck his head through the doorway and the dog got up and started licking his hands. Dwight asked what the problem was and I told him the dog had growled at me.

Dwight said, “Good, he’s supposed to. He doesn’t know you yet. Champion,” he said, “this is Jack. Let him smell your hands,” he told me. “Go on, he won’t bite.”

I held my hand out and Champion sniffed it.
“Jack,
” Dwight said to him.
“Jack.
”

I asked Dwight whose dog it was. He told me it was mine.

“Mine?”

“You said you wanted a dog.”

“Not this one.”

“Well, he’s yours. You paid for him,” he added.

I asked what he meant, I paid for him, but Dwight wouldn’t tell me. I found out a few minutes later. Something was wrong in my room. Then I saw that my Winchester was gone. I stared at the pine rack I had made for it in shop. I stared at the rack as if I’d overlooked the rifle the first time, and only needed to look more carefully to see it. I sat on my bed for a while, then I stood up and walked out to the living room, where Dwight was watching television.

I said, “My Winchester is gone.”

“That dog is purebred weimaraner,” Dwight said, keeping his eyes on the TV.

“I don’t want it. I want my Winchester.”

“Then you’re shit out of luck, because your Winchester is on its way to Seattle.”

“But that was my rifle!”

“And Champ’s your dog! Jesus! I trade some old piece of crap for a valuable hunting dog and what do you do? Piss and moan, piss and moan.”

“I’m not pissing and moaning.”

“The hell you aren’t. You can just make your own deals from now on.”

My mother was at a political conference. She had done some local organizing for the Democratic party in the last state election, and now they were trying to get her to work for Adlai Stevenson. When she got home the next day I met her outside and told her about the rifle.

She nodded as if she’d already heard the story. “I knew he’d do something,” she said.

They had it out after I went to bed. Dwight made some noise but she backed him down. The rifle belonged to me, she said. He could yell all he wanted but on that point there was nothing to discuss. She made Dwight agree that when Champion’s owner sent up the AKC papers he’d promised to send, papers that would prove the dog’s illustrious line of descent, Dwight would call him and arrange to drive Champion down to Seattle and get my rifle back. He couldn’t do that now because he didn’t know the man’s last name or address.

In this way the affair was settled to my satisfaction, except that the man somehow forgot to send the papers.

 

WE TOOK CHAMPION hunting for the first time at a gravel quarry where mergansers liked to congregate. These ducks were considered bad eating, so most people didn’t shoot them. But Dwight would shoot at anything. He was a poor hunter, restless and unobservant and loud, and he never got the animals he went after. This made him furious; on the way back to the car he would kill anything he saw. He killed chipmunks, squirrels, blue jays and robins. He killed a great snowy owl with a 12-gauge from ten feet away and took potshots at bald eagles as they skimmed the river. I never saw him get a deer, a grouse, a quail, a pheasant, an edible duck, or even a large fish.

He thought his equipment was to blame. To his collection of target rifles he added two hunting rifles, a Marlin 30/30 and a Carand M-1 with a telescopic sight. He had a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun for waterfowl and a semiautomatic 16-gauge that he called his “bush gun.” To spot the game he never got close to he carried a pair of high-powered Zeiss binoculars. To dress the game he never killed he carried a Puma hunting knife.

For all the talk of Champion being my dog, I understood that he was supposed to be part of Dwight’s total hunting system.

When we reached the quarry, Dwight threw a stick into the water to stimulate Champion’s retrieving instincts and to demonstrate the softness of his mouth. He said weimaraners were famous for their mouths. “You won’t see one tooth mark on that stick,” he told me. Champion ran up to the water, then stopped. He looked back at us and whimpered. He was quaking like a chihuahua. “Go on, boy,” Dwight said. Champion whimpered again. He bent one paw, stuck it in the water, pulled it out and started barking at the stick.

“Smart dog,” Dwight said. “Knows it’s not a bird.”

The mergansers came in at dusk. They must have seen us, but as if they knew what they tasted like they showed no fear. They flew in low and close together. Dwight fired both barrels at them. One duck dropped like a stone and the rest rushed up again, quacking loudly. They circled the quarry long enough for Dwight to reload and fire. This time he didn’t hit anything, and the mergansers flew away.

The bird he’d brought down was floating in the water about twenty feet from shore. Its bill was under the surface, its wings outstretched. It wasn’t moving. Dwight broke the shotgun and pulled out the shells. “Get ’er, Champ,” he said. But Champion did not get the duck. He wasn’t even on the shore now, or anywhere else in sight. Dwight called to him in tones of friendliness, command, and threat, but he did not return. I offered to bring the duck in by throwing rocks behind it. Dwight said not to bother, it was just a garbage bird.

We found Champion under the car. Dwight had to sweet-talk him for several minutes before he bellied out, yelping softly and cowering. “He’s a little gun-shy is all,” Dwight said. “We can fix that.”

Dwight decided to fix that by taking Champion goose hunting in eastern Washington. He talked my mother into going along. They were supposed to be away for about a week, but came back on unfriendly terms after three days. My mother told me that Champion had run off across the fields after the first shot, and that it took Dwight most of the afternoon to find him. They kept him in the car the next day but he pissed and crapped all over the seats. That was when they decided to come home.