George Pelecanos: The Way Home

“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.”