Stick Read online

  That night, it meant both.

  * * *

  Bosten drove out to the short stretch of low bank beach at Pilot Point and parked.

  He left the lights on, and I watched how the dashboard glow made him look green.

  “You might need to drive us home, Stick,” he said.

  I already knew that.

  And I’d seen seventh graders who could roll better joints than Bosten, but I loved to watch how completely inept he and Paul were whenever they got into their “danger mode.”

  Personally, I hated the smell of pot.

  But I did wonder how Mom would hold a joint, if she ever smoked one.

  Paul reached back between the seats and handed his baggie of weed and rolling papers to me. “Will you put this in my bag?”

  When I unzipped Paul’s gym bag, a fog of steam and sweat escaped. I almost gagged. It made my hand wet to slip his baggie back inside it. I touched something wet and clothy. I tried not to think about what disgusting article of Paul’s uniform it may have been.

  “Buck, the stuff in your bag reeks like armpit,” I said.

  Bosten laughed. Paul shoved the dashboard cigarette lighter in to heat it up. It ticked.

  I tapped on the back of Paul’s seat. “You guys can’t smoke pot in the car.”

  Bosten’s door opened, and Paul told me, “Grab my bag, Stick.”

  “I’m not touching it.”

  They spread Paul’s gym towel out on the bank and sat there passing the joint back and forth while I walked down to the edge of the water.

  The wind blew back. I couldn’t smell their smoke, and I was glad for that. I looked out across the blackness of the Puget Sound and could see, through the fog, the lights of Seattle. I turned back and watched the little orange tip of the joint levitate and cross between two shadows, lying on their backs next to each other and staring up at the stars.

  Bosten got up first.

  Then he fell down.

  Paul started laughing at him.

  They were stoned.

  “So check this out.” Paul pushed himself up and dug a hand down inside his bag. He pulled out two things that looked like big green cans. And he pulled out a sock, too, which he let fall limply onto the ground.

  “Number one

  and

  number two,” he said. He dropped the second can and it rolled toward his feet.

  “Don’t tell me those things blow up,” I said.

  “What? My sock?” Paul flipped his wet sock back at my face.

  I ducked.

  Bosten started laughing so hard, I thought he was going to pee himself.

  “Well, they kind of do blow up,” Paul said. “This one’s a smoke grenade. Green fucking smoke.”

  “Bitchin’!” Bosten crawled over on his hands and knees and put his face right down next to it.

  “Francis says it will even go off underwater,” Paul explained. “He told me you could put it in a pool and it will turn the water green and still make smoke, too.”

  “Are you going to throw it in the ocean?” I asked.

  “Let’s throw it in the pool at Wilson.” Bosten laughed.

  I shook my head. “You’re going to get in trouble.”

  “I’m already going to get suspended for fucking up Ricky Dostal.”

  Paul grabbed my brother’s shoulder. “But wait.” He waved his hand over the second, slightly bigger canister. “This one’s called a handpop. It launches a flare into the sky and it floats down on a parachute.”

  Bosten had an almost religious look on his face. “Oh my God. That is so

  bitchin’!”

  “You guys are going to blow your hands off,” I said.

  They just laughed at that.

  I stood back from them. I knew there was no way to talk Paul and Bosten out of doing something crazy. Something was definitely getting blown up at Pilot Point Beach tonight.

  “You know what, Stick?” Paul said. “When we shoot this off, Francis says people are going to think it’s a fucking UFO.”

  “Wow,” I said, as unenthusiastically as possible. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for.”

  Bosten scrambled to his feet. Paul’s towel stuck to him and trailed away from the seat of his jeans like some kind of comet tail, and he dug a hand down into his pocket as he followed his friend down the bank, toward the water’s edge.

  I heard a jangling sound.

  Bosten dropped the car keys at his feet.

  “Here. Go start the car, Stick.”

  What could I do? I tried telling myself it would be no big deal.

  We’d blown stuff up before, only we never shot anything five hundred feet into the air that would light up like a goddamned nuke over Seattle.

  I sat behind the wheel and watched Bosten and Paul laughing, bumping into each other down by the water. I put the shift into neutral and sighed and I turned the key.

  Dad would kill us both if he knew how many times Bosten made me drive him home.

  * * *

  I saw Paul drop the handpop at his feet, and I thought, Good, maybe it’s rolled into the water and he can’t find it. They were just screwing around, anyway, laughing and wrestling with each other. I wondered how anyone could ever enjoy smoking pot, if all it ever did to you was make you act stupid.

  I pulled the Penthouse magazine out from under the seat and studied the pictures by the light of the dashboard gauges. And just as I was settling back in wonder at that steamy bathtub scene, everything lit up, flashed by a sudden white-hot blast that was as bright as the sun.

  Through the windshield, it looked like an old black-and-white science fiction film, a grainy and distorted clip of Bosten and Paul slowly backing away from the shore, their shadows cast down upon the wet ground with a complete pitch that was fierce, absolute. And beyond them stretched the twisted umbilical of smoke that corkscrewed away from the handpop as it ascended and then flared open like an eye, a swinging pendulum of phosphorus that dangled beneath a bat-shaped veil.

  It was amazing.

  The boys stood on the edge of the bank with their chins up, leaning into each other with arms hugging around their shoulders, as though they were watching something that could never be seen this way again.

  I rolled down my window and yelled, “Come on, you dumbshits. Someone’s got to have called the cops by now.”

  They turned and began moving back up toward the car, but it was like slow motion. Paul stuffed the gym towel into his bag and slung it over his shoulder. Bosten climbed into the backseat and Paul sat up front next to me. The bag was open and I could still smell the odor of Paul’s sweat-soaked basketball stuff steaming out from between the teeth of the zipper.

  I rolled the magazine up and dropped it on top of his clothes. “Here.”

  “Penthouse? What were you doing in here all by yourself with this, Stickie?” Paul laughed and pushed my shoulder.

  “Nothing.” I backed the car away from the beach bank. It jerked. I wasn’t a very good driver. “We need you to hide it for us for a day or so.”

  “Yeah,” Bosten dopily affirmed from the backseat.

  I was having a hard time getting the gearshift up into first.

  “But, Buck, you better goddamn give it back to us,” I said.

  Paul pushed his bag down onto the floor between his feet and opened his door.

  “Wait,” he said. “My sock. My fucking sock. I left it on the beach.”

  I reached across him to grab his door, to try to stop Paul Buckley from getting out of the car. When I did, I popped the clutch and stalled out the engine.

  “You are stupid, Buck.”

  He slipped away and ran down toward the beach.

  The UFO was sinking lower, dropping closer to the blackness of the Sound.

  Then Bosten pushed the seat forward and slid out after Paul.

  I sighed as I restarted the car.

  They were both completely stoned, and I couldn’t help worrying that we were going to end up in deep trouble.r />
  I sat there for what seemed like half an hour with the engine idling, nervously watching the rearview mirror for the flashing lights of police cars. I was certain they’d be coming for us. And all the while, the glow from the handpop dimmed away as it sank into the sea. Finally, I turned the motor off and went outside to look for my brother and his friend.

  I found them. They had fallen asleep on the wet ground of the bank, right next to Paul’s stinking sock.

  Bosten was lying on his back, a look of complete peace and contentment on his face; and Paul was sleeping with his head on Bosten’s shoulder, using it as a pillow. I wished I had a camera so I could take a picture to show them how stupid they both looked.

  I kicked Paul on his butt with the toe of my Converse.

  He inhaled sharply and sat up.

  “What?”

  “Wake up, Buck.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re high. Get back in the car.”

  Then I kicked Bosten, too.

  “And don’t forget your goddamned sock.”

  And Paul argued groggily, “That was one of my only team socks, Stick. And what if some cop found it and realized that a Wilson basketball player had been involved in the UFO incident? Did you ever think of that?

  Huh?”

  “Wow,” I said. “You really are smart, Buck.”

  Most guys would think that was enough, that it was time to go home. But not Bosten and Paul. Their short nap invigorated them, and once we got back into the car they demanded two things: that I drive them somewhere else where they could roll and smoke another of their ridiculous joints, and that the night could not end until they’d fired off the green smoke grenade in the water of the David H. Wilson Senior High School swimming pool.

  * * *

  Wilson was completely dark when we got there. On the drive, Bosten kept playing around with Paul’s smoke grenade, just to annoy me. It wasn’t a good idea because I drove the front wheels into the curb twice, which made Paul spill some of his pot down onto the plastic floor mats of my parents’ car.

  “Jesus. Isn’t the street wide enough for you, Stick?” Paul complained.

  And from the backseat, Bosten kept goading, “I wonder what would happen if I pulled this ring out while we were still driving?”

  “We would all die. That’s what,” I said.

  Swerve.

  “But it would look bitchin’, I bet,” he answered.

  “Did it!” Paul proudly held up a crooked and spit-sogged joint.

  The second joint didn’t make them as stupid as the first. Maybe they were getting numb, I thought. I knew I was. My hands were frozen stiff while I stood with Bosten and Paul out in the field behind the pool. I shoved them so far down into the cross-pocket of my sweatshirt that my fingers cupped beneath my crotch.

  I didn’t watch the boys while they smoked their weed, but I couldn’t help being irritated by the annoying smell and the sounds of their strained and slobbered sucking on the joint. I kept my eyes on the pool. Even without any lights on at all, I could see the foggy gray steam from the water rising up above the top of the spiked iron fence that enclosed the swimming and diving arena.

  I thought a warm bath would have been really nice at that moment.

  “Time to go,” Paul said.

  He held the grenade in his right hand, cocked like a spring behind him, as my brother followed him to the edge of the fence. They must have choreographed this ahead of time, I thought, because while Paul held the canister at the ready, Bosten poked his finger through the wire ring.

  Bosten said, “Ready?”

  “Go!”

  Bosten pulled the wire.

  Smoke instantly swallowed Paul’s hand.

  He hurled the grenade up into the night.

  It hit the top of the fence, with a sound like dink!

  Hissing and spewing, it bounced back and landed in the grass between the three of us.

  The last thing I clearly saw was Bosten, falling down in a heap of laughter. As the world disappeared into a noxious green haze, I could hear my brother giggling.

  “Goddamn basketball player who throws like a girl!”

  And Paul, laughing equally hard. “Shut up! That thing fucking scared me, and it’s heavier than shit!”

  I crawled out from the smoke on my hands and knees, crouching when I finally found my way into a patch of clear air.

  “You guys are both so stupid. Can we please go home now?”

  But Paul and Bosten just rolled around in the dark greenness, laughing like they’d never stop.

  DAD AND MOM

  It was just a few minutes before midnight when Bosten and I got home.

  Dad and Mom were waiting for us.

  They didn’t see that it wasn’t Bosten at the wheel, parking the car in its spot next to Dad’s Pontiac. There was no way they’d know about how I snaked my hand up behind the dashboard and reconnected the wire to the odometer, or that I’d carefully shaken out the floor mats of all the marijuana Paul had spilled while trying to spastically craft a joint.

  They didn’t need to know any of that, because they knew enough already.

  Maybe once per week things exactly like this happened in our house.

  Dad had his belt off, folded in his fist, before we even came in from the mudroom. Mom stood just inside the doorway to the living room.

  As soon as Bosten stepped into the house, Dad grabbed him, clawing the soft flannel shirt into a ball right between Bosten’s shoulder blades. Dad pushed him into the living room, past Mom, and threw my brother down across the chair where Dad always smoked and watched television. And when Bosten landed hard and knocked over an ashtray full of twisted butts, I could tell it made Dad even madder.

  Everyone knew what was going to happen next. It was always the same, just sometimes the actor would be different, and I’d be the star of the show; and, usually, the script would be different, too. But if you’ve seen it once, there’s no need to see it again, in my opinion.

  Dad hit Bosten across the center of his back. Hard. It sounded like the belt could cut my brother in two.

  Bosten yelped.

  It sounded pathetic.

  And, like always, I thought I could somehow disappear, not be noticed, so I quietly turned in my socks and began to slip toward the basement stairs.

  Everything smelled like smoke.

  But my mother was right behind me. She grabbed me by my hair (they both liked to drag me around by my hair at times like this—and, usually, it would also remind them that I needed to have it all cut off the next day) and walked me into the living room, holding my head so I couldn’t look away from Dad or my brother.

  “Ricky Dostal’s father called me,” Dad said.

  He hit Bosten again, not hard to hurt him, it was just a prod—something like you’d do to a horse, maybe—just his way of making sure we both knew the title of the story Dad was about to tell us.

  Bosten tightened his arms on the chair, like he was hugging it, like he loved that chair so much. He wasn’t about to try to move.

  “Four hundred dollars!” Dad swung the slashing belt across Bosten again.

  This time, he wasn’t just trying to get our attention.

  “That’s what he wants me to pay him for the emergency room. Four hundred goddamned dollars!”

  Then he hit Bosten across the back of his head.

  I heard my brother cry out.

  But it was soft, buried in the cushion of Dad’s smoking chair.

  I heard it anyway.

  Mom’s hand twisted. Like she was telling me I better not think about turning my face away.

  “You think you’re tough? Beating up a goddamned fourteen-year-old? How do you think I can afford to pay four hundred dollars?”

  I didn’t wish he would stop.

  I knew how stupid wishing was.

  Mom’s hand dug tighter into my hair with each angry word from Dad’s mouth. Dad grabbed the bottom of Bosten’s shirt and pulled it up, baring my brothe
r’s pale and bony back. Then Dad slid both hands through Bosten’s belt and jerked his blue jeans all the way down past his knees. I was terrified and embarrassed for my brother.

  These things happened all the time, though.

  It’s just how the McClellan family did things, and me and Bosten never wondered if, maybe, there wasn’t some other way out there for getting family things done.

  Everyone was like this, right?

  Then Dad began beating Bosten, dutifully cutting red slashes into the flesh across my brother’s back and butt.

  I tried shutting it out, but with each whack of the belt I felt electricity cutting across my own spine. I closed my eyes and swore at myself that I wouldn’t cry, but I called myself an ugly bastard because it was all my fault that Bosten was being beaten.

  I opened my eyes when Mom jerked my head.

  My father hit him with the belt over and over, and Bosten took it, whimpering, shivering at times, until Dad, out of breath, finally stopped.

  Mom’s grip loosened.

  Dad looked at me. I thought I’d be next, but his eyes fell away from me like I wasn’t there at all. He casually fed his belt back through the loops on his slacks and picked up the pack of cigarettes from the floor where Bosten had knocked it down.

  Bosten lay there, stretched across the chair, shaking. He wasn’t crying. I knew Bosten wouldn’t ever cry in front of Dad and Mom.

  He’d do it later.

  Mom let go of my hair and Dad lit a cigarette, and then dropped the pack, again, onto the floor beside his chair. He hooked his fingers into Bosten’s collar and stood him up. I was thankful that Bosten’s shirt fell down and covered his nakedness and the bloody marks on his backside. I hoped, somehow, that the softness of the flannel made my brother not hurt so much.

  Bosten tried pulling up his jeans, but my father wouldn’t allow him to bend forward. He walked Bosten, manacled by his lowered pants, out of the living room and into the hallway. I knew what would happen next. Same as always. Bosten would get locked inside the spare bedroom—I called it Saint Fillan’s room, I will tell you why—no lights, no nothing, not even any clothes; just a galvanized bucket to use for a toilet and a cot with one sheet. This would usually last for two days, sometimes more. It happened to me as often as it happened to him.