Brock Clarke - Exley

I crossed the Square and walked up to the Crystal, but I didn’t go in right away. Because there was a guy sitting on the sidewalk, his back up against the empty building just to the right of the Crystal. His arms were crossed over his chest the way I’d seen the girls in my class do when they were underdressed. Maybe because he was underdressed, too: just a thin flannel shirt and paint-spattered white jeans with loops at the hips to hang your tools on and unlaced work boots and no hat and no jacket. His eyes were open a little, not enough to tell if he was actually seeing me with them, but enough to see how red and runny they were. There was a green army backpack on the ground next to him, and on the other side of him was a bottle of vodka. Its red label said Popov. The guy had a gray beard and messy gray hair, just like S., the guy at the New Parrot; and just like S., he looked old and used up. He looked like he could have been Exley, in other words. He also looked like he could have been half the guys in Watertown. I was trying to be smart. I was trying to be realistic. I was trying to use my head. And my head was telling me, Miller, remember what happened with S. You can’t just draft the first or second guy you meet and expect him to be Exley . But then I told my head, What if I don’t draft him? What if he volunteers?

“Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” the guy asked after he apparently noticed me standing there, looking at him. His voice was faraway and wet and rattling, like he was talking from the bottom of a deep, phlegmy hole. I didn’t answer him, and so he asked the question several more times, using several of the same class of swear words, the same sort of swear words Exley used in his book. This went on for a while, I don’t know how long exactly, because I was still having the argument with myself, in my head and with my head, and my head was saying, Another drunk bum? Why do you think Exley has to be another drunk bum? Why couldn’t he turn out to be that guy? Then my head pointed at the guy walking past us, a tubby, clean-shaven guy with slicked-back black hair who was wearing a shiny blue suit and obviously worked in a bank. Because Exley would never turn out to be that guy , I said back.

Why not? my head wanted to know. Your dad would never turn out to be that guy who joined the army, either, except he did. He was .

I didn’t have an answer for that. I just stood there and let the white noise of the guy’s swearing wash over me, until my head argued, This is ridiculous. You might as well call him Popov. He’s as likely to be the guy they named the vodka after as he is to be Exley .

But my dad doesn’t need a guy named Popov , I argued back. He needs Exley . And after that, my head was quiet for a while.

By now, Exley had stopped swearing and started hacking, hacking and hacking. I leaned over, picked up the half-full bottle of vodka, handed it to him. He drank straight out of the bottle, drank until the vodka was gone. By the time he’d finished it, Exley was pretty much gone himself. He gave one of those satisfied, all-over body shivers, then slumped down against the wall, his pale, spotted hand still strangling the neck of the now empty bottle. I crouched in front of him. His eyes were slits, barely opened, but he wasn’t sleeping, not yet; I could see his pupils in there, lazily moving from side to side, like a searchlight.

“Are you Exley?” I said, and shook him a little. His eyes opened a little wider, and his mouth opened, too, I guessed in an attempt to say something. Except no words came out, only a sweet, rotting smell, like a cow that’d died from eating too much cotton candy. I moved back from Exley and held my nose, hoping he’d take the hint. He didn’t, just lay there with his mouth hanging wide open. Still holding my nose, I took a couple of steps toward Exley, and with my free hand I closed his mouth for him. He let me, too. He watched my hand move toward his mouth, felt my thumb under his lower lip, my fingers over his upper. But he didn’t do anything to stop me. It occurred to me, despite his swearing, that Exley was a sweet, passive guy. He was looking at me, lips pursed, head cocked to the side, as though to say, What next?

“Why don’t we get you something to eat?” I suggested. Exley nodded. But he didn’t move. He just lay with this moony look on his face. I grabbed his left hand, the hand that wasn’t holding the vodka bottle, and tried to pull him onto his feet, but I only managed to drag him out of his slump and face-first onto the sidewalk, where he lay, not making a sound, not a peep. His arms were at his sides, like a ski jumper’s.

“Who is that guy?” said Harold’s voice. It scared me and I let go of Exley’s hands and fell backward, then scrambled to my feet. Harold was on the sidewalk behind me. He must have run all the way from school. He was gulping for air. His Adam’s apple looked like it was trying to bust out of his throat.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I followed you,” Harold said. He moved a little closer to me and to Exley. Harold had a grossed-out look on his face, like Exley was a meal that Harold couldn’t believe he was supposed to eat. “Who is this guy?” he asked.

“Frederick Exley,” I said.

“The guy you talked about in class today,” Harold said.

“Yes,” I said. “Here’s his book.” I took a copy out of my backpack and handed it to him. Harold looked at Exley’s picture on the back cover and then bent over to look at the left side of Exley’s face, the side that was up.

“That’s not the same guy,” he said. He was still bent over, and I had to stop myself from kicking him.

“Shut up, Harold,” I said. Because this was the way you talked to Harold. Because this was the way Harold talked, about anything: in the negative. For instance, in gym class just the week before, during our wrestling unit, Coach B. was demonstrating on Harold (Harold was also the kind of kid coaches demonstrated on) how to get your opponent to the mat, flip him on his back, and then pin him. After doing all this, Coach B. counted to three and said, “Pin.”

“That,” Harold said, a little breathless from being manhandled, “ — that wasn’t a pin.”

“It wasn’t?” Coach B. said. His teeth were gritted. He knew Harold, which was why he demonstrated on him and not on someone else.

“You didn’t keep me down for the full three seconds,” Harold said. “It wasn’t a pin.”

“OK. Why don’t we try it again,” Coach B. said, his voice heavy with fate. He rested his big barrel chest on Harold’s cavelike one, hooked one of Harold’s sticklike legs with one of his meaty arms, and stayed there for three seconds. He stayed there for longer than three seconds, much longer than three seconds. I started getting a little panicky, the way you feel when you watch someone being held underwater for what might be too long. So I got down on my knees, yelled, “Pin!” and slapped the mat. Coach B. did what he’d taught us to do once he yelled “Pin!” and slapped the mat. He pushed himself up off Harold. Coach B. rubbed his eyes with his fists, removed the fists, blinked once, twice, three times. Then he looked at us waiting for him to order us around. “Pair off,” he said. I paired off with Harold, who was pretty much up from the mat by this time but who still managed to gasp, “But Coach B. didn’t pin me the first time.”

“Shut up, Harold,” I said then, and I said it now, too, when he told me that the Exley on the back of the book and the Exley on the sidewalk weren’t the same Exley. “That picture was taken __________ years ago.”

“Why did you just say ‘ __________ ‘?” Harold asked.