Gregg Hurwitz - You're Next

Shep follows.

‘Where did you get these?’ The Couch Mother stands over them, legs trembling from the exertion, the mini liquor bottles dwarfed in her flushed, pillowy palm.

Mike and Shep are ten. They are now the same height, but Mike is wider still, more solid, whereas Shep’s body, pulled thin like taffy, can’t seem to catch up to him.

Shep says, ‘What?’

He has learned to speak softly to control his voice, to over-compensate for his bad hearing, for the guttural bursts and blurred consonants. People lean toward him to distinguish his words. They take a step or two in his direction. He draws the world to him, if it is interested. Generally it isn’t. So he has learned something else. He has learned to use his semideafness to his advantage.

That is never clearer than at this moment.

The Couch Mother’s gaze shifts from Shep, zeroing in on Mike. He stares at her ash-speckled crocheted sweater, grimaces, and says, ‘Valley Liquor.’

The Couch Mother frowns, her face folding in and in around her lips. ‘We are going back there to return these, and you are both going to apologize and take whatever punishment you are due. Do you understand me?’

Mike watches the fifty-milliliter nips of Jack Daniel’s disappear into her elephantine purse. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says.

Shep says, ‘What?’

The Couch Mother is not fooling, because she marches them outside and lowers herself into her long-suffering Pontiac. Mike has seen her drive only a few times before, and only to the hospital when someone needs stitches or a fever won’t break. The passenger seat is stripped to the coils, and her seat is shoved back so far that Shep has to sit on Mike’s lap in the back. With dread they watch the scenery roll by while the Couch Mother navigates streets, grunting against the non-power steering, her stomach adding friction to the wheel.

In no time they are behind the counter at the liquor store, standing at attention before Mr Sandoval, who never lets them handle the comic books, who grimaces when he counts their change for Dr Pepper bottles, who hates them. Mike mumbles out an apology, and Mr Sandoval, who has set aside his cursing, hateful self before the Couch Mother, makes a big show of patronizing magnanimity.

It is time for Shep to apologize, but Mike knows that he will not. Shep is not like him or anyone else; he is made of steel and concrete; he cannot be broken.

‘Shepherd dear, your turn.’

‘What?’

‘You’re not going to play this game with me. Now, apologize to Mr Sandoval this instant.’

‘What?’

It escalates until Mike is uncomfortable, until he backs away so his shoulder brushes the real-size liquor bottles on the shelves behind them. He notices a picture Mr Sandoval keeps taped to the cash register – his daughter. It is school-picture day, and she beams proudly, but her little skirt is stained and tattered at the edges. It reminds Mike of the communal shirts in the dresser, and he is flooded with guilt, his assumptions cracking apart one after another, like dropped eggs. But his remorse is temporary, because the Couch Mother’s voice has risen so as to drown out all thought.

Just when it seems Shep will triumph, that he has worn them down into defeat, he mutters, ‘Sorry.’

Mike is shocked. He has never seen Shep cave in, and he fears the act will diminish him irrevocably. On the ride home, Mike pouts. Shep turns on Mike’s lap, studies his face, his own expression unreadable. And then his lips twist in his version of a smile. Tugging up his shirt furtively, Shep flashes the pint bottle of Jack Daniel’s he has shoved down his pants.

A blurred half decade, and they are fourteen. Shep has taken to wearing a pendant of St. Jerome Emiliani – patron saint of orphans – that he stole from a pawnshop. While Mike awaits his growth spurt, Shep has, at last, grown into his feet. He towers, husky with premature muscle. Despite some acne, he now buys Jack Daniel’s without getting carded. At the home, Charlie Dubronski lives and breathes in constant fear, but Shep has never laid a hand on him. He just looks at him now and then, and that is enough.

Mike and Shep have ridden the bus over to Van Nuys Park, where the ice-cream man forgets to lock the back of his truck, so Bomb Pops can be stolen while he’s distracted with paying customers. They have made their way over to the far baseball diamond, where a father, son, and grandfather play ball. The boys lean against the chain-link by the backstop and watch cynically. The grandfather pitches, the son bats, and the father plays somewhere between shortstop and left field, retrieving the ball and tossing it back. They have a pretty good system down. The boy, who is about their age, dribbles a grounder to his father.

Mike says, ‘He can only hit the pull,’ and Shep remarks, ‘’Cuz he’s not good enough to go the other way.’

The father’s car, a straight-off-the-lot forest green Saab, is pulled up onto a patch of dirt behind the fence, and the boy’s bike, an expensive-looking ten-speed, leans against the bumper.

Mike says, ‘Nice set o’ wheels,’ and Shep says, ‘The 900’s a piece of shit.’ Mike agrees out loud but secretly loves the Saab, its sleek lines, its odd angles, how it’s not afraid to be ugly and beautiful at the same time. The car reeks of affluence and power, of accomplishment and control. In its unblemished paint, he sees his own wavery reflection, his idealized self, a future he cannot yet discern. The dealer’s plate stares out at him – WINGATE DEALERSHIP: WE HAVE WHAT YOU WANT! – and he thinks the name, like the car, boasts of success. Wingate. Win- gate . It has a ring.

A voice from the baseball field shatters Mike’s reverie, the father calling out, ‘Ready for a Fudgsicle?’ For an instant, in his disorientation, Mike mistakes the man as speaking to him. But then the son smiles and tosses aside his bat and three generations set out across the park for the ice-cream truck Mike and Shep just looted.

Mike watches them walking away. The boy’s longish blond hair curls out from beneath his cap and makes Mike ashamed of his and Shep’s buzz cuts. He hates that his whole stupid appearance is a concession to head lice.

Shep walks around the fence and picks up the bat. He comes back. Kicks over the kid’s bike. ‘Wanna piss on it?’

This is something they have done before.

Mike shakes his head.

Shep says, ‘Car first?’ He never uses extra words.

Mike stares at the beautiful Saab, and it seems a shame, but there is something burning deep in his chest that wants a way out. He’s not sure what it is, but it has to do with the white gleam of the father’s teeth when he called to his son about getting a Fudgsicle. Mike says, ‘I don’t know.’

Shep says, ‘Why?’

He is embarrassed, but it is Shep, and he can tell Shep anything. ‘I mean, if my mom is alive, I owe it to her not to wind up in-’

Shep says, ‘There is no past.’

Mike coughs out a laugh. ‘No past?’

Shep’s lips part, showing off the slight overlap of his front teeth. ‘There are only two things in life: loyalty and stamina. Everything else is just a distraction.’

‘What about responsibility?’ He is channeling the Couch Mother and hates himself for it.

Shep speaks quietly, as always. ‘You’re not a son. You’re not a brother. No one wants you. So. Make it your own. You can be whatever you want to be. And right now? You’re a man with a task.’

Mike takes the bat. One headlight goes with a satisfying pop. The moon-crescent ding distorts the shine of the hood, the next even more so. He is lost in a haze, in something sticky sweet and unslakable.

Mike’s forearms ache. He stops, pants. Across the park, on someone’s boom box, Bon Jovi is going down in a blaze of glory.