Роберт Паркер - The Boxer and the Spy

Tank lumbered into the library, saw Terry, and came over and sat down beside him.

“Whaddya doing?” he said, looking at the newspaper files.

“I’m reading about Jason.”

“Man, you’re really into that, aren’t you?”

“I liked Jason.”

“Yeah,” Tank said. “He was okay. I think he was gay. You?”

“Yeah,” Terry said. “I thought so.”

“He ever say?”

“Not to me,” Terry said.

“You didn’t care?”

Terry shook his head.

“I didn’t care,” he said.

Tank nodded.

“Couple guys on the team are using steroids,” he said.

“Football players?”

“Yeah. I won’t tell their names,” Tank said. “But they look good, and they told me it really helps.”

“No bad symptoms?” Terry said.

“They say no.”

“They know anything about Jason using them?” Terry said.

“Nope. They kind of laughed when I asked.”

“Where do they get ’roids?” Terry said.

“They won’t say. This is kind of hot stuff, Terry. Guys don’t like to talk about it.”

Terry nodded.

“You ever try them?” he said.

“Hell no,” Tank said.

“I can see why,” Terry said. “You get any bigger you’ll have your own zip code.”

Tank shrugged.

“What are you gonna do?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Terry said. “If you ever find out where the ’roids came from that your friends take...”

“If I can,” Tank said. “Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know why I want to know,” Terry said. “I don’t know anything. I’m fishing.”

“For what?” Tank said.

“Anything that bites, I guess. I can’t seem to let go of it.”

Tank laughed. The librarian glared at them from her desk in front.

“I known you all my life,” Tank whispered. “You never let go of nothin’.”

“I went on the Internet looking up steroids,” Terry said.

“You learn anything?” Abby said.

“I learned that some people think they’re poison, and some people think they’re not.”

They were hanging on the Wall together, across the common from the town library. There was no one else on the Wall. I like being alone with her, Terry thought.

“So we’re nowhere,” Abby said.

We!

“It’s like you can’t trust anything, you know?” Terry said. “You go to some anti-drug site and they preach to you about how bad it all is and talk like kids are morons and we don’t know what the hell we’re doing.”

“No wonder we don’t trust them,” Abby said.

“Adults?”

“Yes,” Abby said. “They’re so know-it-all. And mostly they don’t have a clue.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean why can’t they say, you know, some people think steroids do this, and some people think they do that, and here are the known facts,” Abby said. “Why isn’t there anyplace like that to go to?”

“I don’t know,” Terry said.

Abby looked at him for a moment and smiled.

“And you don’t care,” she said.

Terry shrugged.

“Well,” he said. “My mother’s not much like that. She’s pretty fair, you know. She doesn’t pretend to know everything.”

“And your father?” Abby said.

“He’s dead,” Terry said.

“I know. I’m sorry. I meant was he like your mom when he was alive?”

“He was okay,” Terry said. “He just started teaching me how to box.”

“What did he die of?” Abby said.

“Worked for the power company, got electrocuted on a job.”

“Oh how awful,” Abby said.

“Happened when I was twelve,” Terry said. “I’m kind of used to it now.”

“Your mother works,” Abby said.

“Yeah. She’s a bartender.”

“Really?” Abby said. “Does she make enough? To live in this town?”

“Power company was to blame, I guess, when my father died,” Terry said. “They gave her some money, and she paid off the mortgage and made some kind of trust fund for me to go to college. So yeah, we’re getting by.”

“Funny, I’ve known you since we were three,” Abby said. “But I never knew how your father died.”

“No reason you should. Hell, I don’t know anything about your parents, what they do, what their names are. I don’t know about anybody’s parents.”

“They do seem kind of, like, they don’t have anything to do with this life.”

“The one we have with each other?” Terry said.

“Yes, you and me, and the other kids. It’s like adults don’t get it that this life is going to school, hanging on the Wall,” Abby said. “This is real life.”

“You think a lot,” Terry said.

“I guess so,” Abby said. “Don’t you?”

“Not so much,” Terry said.

“You’re thinking a lot about Jason Green,” Abby said.

“That’s different,” Terry said.

“Why?”

“Because I want to find out what happened to him.”

“So you think about problems and I think about how things are,” Abby said.

“Actually,” Terry said. “I think about you a lot too.”

His father’s wake was in the funeral home, Terry remembered. His mother and father weren’t religious. He guessed he wasn’t either. His father’s casket was closed. The last time he had seen his father was when he’d put on his slicker and hard hat and left in a stormy night for a downed power line. Later there had been the phone call. And the rushing about in the night, and then everything became numb and he walked blankly through the rest of it, until here he was at the wake. He and his mother stood near the casket in the flat silence of the funeral parlor. There were some candles. His mother was very pale, he noticed. He wondered if he was. And all her movements seemed stiff. He felt kind of stiff too.

Friends of his mother and father came and went, saying awkward things about sorrow mostly to his mother. Some of the men shook his hand; some of the women patted him on the shoulder. There were no kids. Kids didn’t go to wakes much. The people who worked in the funeral parlor were hovering around, guiding people to the guest book, looking sad. He hated them; they seemed phony to him. They didn’t even know his father.

Then there was a kid, by himself, Jason Green, wearing a suit coat and tie. He walked past the funeral parlor man at the door, who looked at him as if he didn’t belong, and came straight up to Terry.

“Hi,” he said. “I wanted to tell you something.”

Terry said, “Thanks for coming,” as he had already said two dozen times. It was what his mother had told him to say. He too had on a coat and tie. It seemed odd to him.

“My father died when I was ten,” Jason said. “After a while you won’t feel so bad as you do now.”

Terry nodded.

“You’ll get used to it,” Jason said.

Terry nodded again.

“I just wanted you to know,” Jason said.

“Thank you,” Terry said. “Thanks for coming.”

Seated behind his desk in his office, Mr. Bullard looked even bigger than when he was walking around. Mr. Bullard nodded Terry to a seat across from him and sat silently looking at him. He had his suit coat off and his sleeves rolled and his arms folded across his chest. His forearms were huge.

Like Popeye, Terry thought.

“You wanted to see me?” Terry said.

Bullard nodded silently. Terry waited.

“You went to the nurse yesterday,” Bullard said after a time. “Without a slip.”

Terry started to say yes sir, but stopped.

“Yes,” he said.