Chinese Handcuffs
Authors: Chris Crutcher
For Tracy and Paige
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A hundred yards from shore, Dillon Hemingway switches to breaststroke, pulling hard with his arms, while letting his legs follow in an easy whip kick, readying them for the transition into the fifty-mile bike ride. At sixteenâa high school juniorâthis is his second triathlon, and he's learned well from the first, learned to take his advantage over most others in the water, but not to burn himself out thereâthere's too far left to go.
He tears off his goggles and hands them to Stacy, poised with his bicycle and his gym shorts, which he pulls on over the wet suit as she hands him his Reeboks. The socks are a little hard to get on over his wet feet, and he loses some time drying them; but all in all, the transition isn't bad, considering he hasn't spent the money for the correct cross-training gear. In a very few
seconds he is on the bike and gathering speed.
At twenty-five miles, shooting through the regional park, a number of the better bikers have passed him, but he's holding his own, still leading in the fifteen to nineteen age-group. At forty miles a woman with a small child in a bike seat passes him on a steep hill, and he makes a mental note to work harder on the bike leg of the competition. The child smiles and waves, and Dillon starts to laughânearly hard enough to bring him to a stop.
He's off the bike at the switch point, and Stacy slaps his butt as she hands him a bottle of Gatorade and a piece of welcome advice. “Get your butt in gear,” she says, and he tries to smile but only drools and takes off down the road for the 13.2-mile half-marathon that will take him to the finish line in the middle of Riverfront Park.
As in his initial triathlon, his knees nearly buckle at the onset of the long downhill grade that makes up the first two miles of the race, and he remembersâtoo lateâhe was supposed to gear down the bike in the last couple of miles to allow for the transition. He is three miles into the run before his knees finally lose their consistency of warm rubber and he is able to fall into his pace. Drawing from a novel he read recently, called
Dog
Soldiers,
he envisions a perfect triangle in the back of his skull, then scans his body for pain, visually placing it within the borders of the triangle to make it tolerable. He puts the memory of his brother in there, too, but the triangle will not hold him.
Ten miles into the run he begins to fade, despite taking nourishment at all the aid stations and cutting his pace back. At twelve miles the borders of the triangle begin to deteriorate and the burning pain commences to leak out all over him. Anguish fills the spaces between his muscle strands, and his calves threaten to make fists and drive him to the ground. He keeps them stretched, pulling his toes back toward the leg and striking the ground heel first. The idea of trying to catch anyone ahead of him floats away, and he concentrates only on holding off those coming. A bald man, easily forty-five, shoots by, followed by a woman in her twenties. He picks up his pace and stays with the woman for about a hundred yards before she kicks in and leaves him dazzled. Dillon stumbles across the finish line and falls to the side of the path, onto the cool grass, where he lies there on his back, in immense pain, laughing and forcing his toes back toward his shins to hold off the dancing cramp muscles in his legs.
“Keep walking,” an official says kindly. “Keep
walking or we'll need a rack to stretch your legs out.”
Dillon nods, trying to rise, but the cramps bring him to the ground. He laughs to keep from crying and says, “Shoot me,” to the official. “Please. Shoot me.”
The official smiles and walks away.
“Not to end the pain,” Dillon yells after him. “To end the stupidity.”
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Thirty minutes later, when his calf muscles have stopped their samba and he can walk around without being tackled from within, Dillon finds himself face-to-face with a local TV newsman informing him he has won his age-group and asking for an interview.
“Sure,” Dillon says, running his hand through his hair in a dismal attempt at rapid grooming. Streaks of white follow the lines of his muscular body, the salty residue of a flood of liquids coursing through him over the past four hours.
“I don't usually do sports,” the reporter says. “I'm substituting today. Help me out with the terms if I need it, okay?” He guides Dillon to a spot on the grass before a huge pine tree and introduces himself as Wayne Wisnett, a fact Dillon already knows from watching the evening news on Channel 6.
When the camera rolls, Wayne asks a few questions
about what it was like out there, to which Dillon's answers amount to “Hard.”
When the newscaster discovers Dillon is but a junior at Chief Joseph High School, he marvels at his size and makes the guess, on the air, that Dillon must be
some kind
of prep school athlete.
“Nope,” Dillon says. “This is all I do. I want to qualify for the Ironman someday. It's in Hawaii. And it's exactly twice this far.”
“Your football and track coaches must be banging their heads against the locker doors,” Wayne Wisnett says into the camera.
“I wouldn't be surprised,” Dillon says, smiling. “Could I just say one thing?”
“Sure,” the newscaster says. “I'd say you've earned it.”
Dillon looks squarely into the camera and breaks into an enormous toothy grin. “I'd just like to thank Mr. John Caldwell, the principal at my school, for making all this possible.”
Dear Preston,
Gotta tell you this feels weird. I got the idea from a book called
The Color Purple,
by a lady named Alice Walker. It's a good bookâa
really
good bookâbut that's not the point. The main character didn't have anyone in the real world to talk to, no one she could trust, so she started writing letters to God, because It (that's the pronoun she used for God because she wasn't all that sure of His or Her gender) was about the only thing left she believed in. Since you've been gone, I've been running around so full of that day and everything that probably led up to it that if I don't tell somebody about it, I might just explode. Only there's no one to tell. I can't burden Dad with it; he certainly has enough other things to worry about, what with Mom and Christy having left and working his ass off like he's always done. And Stacy's got her own stuff to deal with
about you. Anyway, as you probably know, I have a pretty splotchy history with God, so that leaves you. And why not? You're about the only thing I can think of that
I
believe in. I mean, man, you are
real
to me now. I can let down with you now because I know I won't have to take any shit back like I did all the time when you were alive.
When people ask, I tell them that you escaped back into the universe by your own hand. Pretty poetic characterization for blasting your brains out, don't you think? Hey, I always was a man of letters. I've decided I want to be a writer someday, and Coach says (she's still the best teacher I ever had) that to pull that off, I have to
write.
That is the ulterior motive for writing you, considering the chances of your actually ever reading any of this.
I think everyone thought I'd come back to school after your funeral all quiet and humble and keep my smart mouth shut and just graduate. People treat death funny, like they think after someone's had a close brush with it, all the humor is supposed to go out of their lives and they're supposed to get real serious about things. That's not what happened to me, though. In some ways I felt even more alive after you were gone, and whatever it is in me that doesn't like to get pushed around or take things for granted just because adults say them got bigger.
Anyway, at the end of this year, when I graduate summa
cum desperate from this jive time educational wasteland, there'll be some major backslapping and cap throwing by Mr. Caldwell and some faculty members, whoâlooking backâwould just as soon have seen me graduate the same day I walked in. Caldwell is the vice-principal in charge of discipline nowâworked his way up from coach, through counselor, and he claims his position was created the day you and I enrolled. Man's got no better manners than to speak ill of the dead. It's flattering, but I know it's not true. I haven't had it any tougher academically than I ever hadâhell, since I've been here, I've pulled down more As than an aardvark in an Appalachian avalancheâit's just that they've had to spend so many would-be educational man-hours trying to keep me under control. I have to say I sympathize to some extent; I have a pretty hard time keeping myself under control sometimes. But boy, they haven't made it easy. I might say that your having preceded me by two years as a drug-crazed biker hasn't exactly made my road any easier. But that was your choice.
I haven't turned into a jerk or anything, at least not by my standards, but it's been real hard getting the powers around hereâespecially Caldwellâto understand my
meaning,
which has become important to me. There isn't much time. You taught me that. He's been so busy finding
different ways to tell me what is and isn't good for me he never
hears
me. The message is pretty simple actually: Everything I am doing
isn't
good for me and everything I'm not doing
is.
Caldwell could certainly have saved a lot of energy by saying it only once. Hell, I've always heard him; I just never agreed.
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“Comedy is tragedy standing on its head with its pants down.” Remember that? Somebody famous said it first, but I think you and I heard it from Dad, back when I was too young to know what it meant. I know what it means now, though, because I gotta say, Preston, I've seen about enough tragedy in my life to last me the rest of it, and sometimes when I can't find the humor anywhere, well, that's when I get pretty close to the edge. I guess that's where you were.
I got your note. Real creative. “That time with the cat. Don't ever forget.” You really went out of your way with the details. I guess you were talking about Charlie, right? I got it. When I showed the note to Dad, I didn't tell all, only “It's just about this cat we killed when we were little.” I couldn't stand for him to know more. I tell you, Preston, even eight years after the fact, Charlie's memory still brings me to my knees. I've never been able to write him off as merely the victim of a vicious, senseless childhood prank. I
guess you couldn't either.
When I think back on it, losing your legs on the Harley was almost worse than when you finally killed yourself, at least for me. You were never really the same after that, no matter how hard you tried. It was hard to talk about that; you always just cut me off. That was the first time I knew how much I liked it that so many people thought we were twinsâwhen we weren't anymore. I really missed that. I used to pretend we were, you know, even though you were two years older. I never thought about how hard that must have been for you, me being so big and you so little. I just figured Stacy was our great equalizer. No matter how good I was at sports or music or humor or
anything,
she loved you. There were times I would have traded all my size and talent to have her. God, I
hated that
she loved you.
You know, when you think about it, Mom and Dad must have had a pretty goddamn shallow gene pool. Remember how old Phil Roberts down at the Pastime Tavern used to say it looked like you were born on one day, then turned around and spit me out on the next? I don't think we were so close we could have switched partners on a double date, or shown up for each other's detention, but often as not, folks had to take a quick second look to see which one of us had just gone by.
I guess that's about as far as the resemblance went, though, right? I mean, you were one focused dude, at least
before you started in on drugs. I always thought if I looked in the dictionary under
intense,
your picture would be there instead of a definition. I think your sense of humor hit the road about three days before you were bornâno offense. That didn't leave you with much for the hard times, nothing to help spring yourself back with when life hammered you flat, which seemed often. I mean, from the moment he walked into John R. Rogers Kindergarten, Preston Hemingway took shit from no one. They used to stand in line to give you shit. I think I could count
on
one partially amputated hand the times I saw you laugh out loud.
But me, I was a survivor when you were here, and I'm a survivor now that you're gone, though it isn't as easy. Sometimes I think you hated that about me, that things looked so easy for me, but I take the laid-back position because it's the one that gives me the best advantage. And I ain't goin' out like you, bro. I've seen some butt-ugly phenomena in the past two years, starting with you squeezing the trigger, but I'll be damned if I'll take your road. Might as well be straight about it. I loved you and should
anyone
speak ill of your name, I'll mop the place up with him; but you left by the back door and you left early, and to my way of thinking that's a cowardly way out. Dillon Hemingway is going to by God be here when the smoke clears. And if there's any way, he'll be here laughing.
Well, that's probably enough for now. Actually, I like this. Maybe it'll work. You'll be hearing from me.
Your brother,
Dillon
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Ten-year-old Preston Hemingway stands at the rear of an eight-month-old Saint Bernard, slapping him lightly in the face with his own tail, challenging him to a duel. His eight-year-old brother, Dillon, leans against the side of the garage, laughing, cheering for the dog. The dog is named Blitz, short for Blitzkrieg, a favorite word their father, a Vietnam vet and amateur historian, uses to describe how the Germans fought World War II.
Blitz takes a couple of trial bites at the furry sword in Preston's hands, then charges after it like a beast gone haywire as Preston jumps back. Blitz chomps down and holds on, spinning faster and faster, Preston loudly urging him to stay with it for eight seconds if he wants the points. The giant dog stops suddenly, his tail sandwiched between immense jaws, like an embarrassed teddy bear, staring at Dillon rolling on the ground with glee. He senses the joke is on him and releases his hold. The tail falls free.
“Again! Again!” Dillon chants, and Preston reaches
again for the tail; but Blitz has had enough and bolts from his grasp, woofing twice loudly, before lumbering across the back alley into Mrs. Crummet's yard. Both boys holler at him to get back in this yard right this minute; but that only serves to make him run faster, and before he knows it, he's face-to-face with Charlie the Cat.
It's a known fact that if there's an animal in all of Three Forks meaner than Mrs. Crummet, it's Mrs. Crummet's cat, a three-legged alley tom with a face like a dried-up creek bed and the temperament of a freeway sniper.
Mean
cats call Charlie mean. He chewed that other leg off extracting himself from a muskrat trap, and he's utterly willing to let anyone, man or beast, know that experience left him feelin' right poorly toward the world and every living thing in it.
Before the boys can act, a high-pitched screech cuts through the neighborhood, followed by the frantic song of a panicky half-grown St. Bernard. Blitz streaks back into the yard, bleeding profusely from a two-inch slice across his nose. Mrs. Crummet is at the edge of her yard, cackling and shaking her bony finger at Preston and Dillon as if they were Hansel and Gretel. “You boys keep that mangy dog out of my yard or Charlie'll have him for breakfast. Do you hear me? Do you
hear
me?”
“Shut up, you old bag,” Preston yells back. “Our
dog didn't do anything to your stupid cat. Or your yard either.”
“You watch your filthy mouth, young man. I have a mind to tell your momma what you just said.”
“Go ahead,” Preston shouts back. “My momma thinks you're an old bag, too.”
Mrs. Crummet starts to speak, her skinny finger aimed at Preston like a poison dart gun, but she has nothing to say. Everybody thinks she's an old bag.
She
thinks she's an old bag.
She whirls and stomps toward her door. At the porch she whirls again, eyes blazing, voice vibrating with tension. “If that dog comes back in my yard,” she says, “I'll call the police.”
The chief of police in Three Forks is Finas Hemingway, Caulder Hemingway's brother, Dillon and Preston's uncle.
In early evening, just after dinner, Preston and Dillon let themselves out the back door and through the clear, balmy evening toward the garage, Preston carrying a gunnysack and Dillon a paper bag full of leftovers from supper. While Preston seals off the hole leading to the adjoining woodshed and a three-inch space between the overhead doors and the garage floor, Dillon spreads a trail of food from the edge of Mrs. Crummet's back
yard to the side door, which they leave slightly ajar. Then they sit behind it in the dark, munching a package of chocolate-covered graham crackers, and wait. Soon enough, following his stomach to the heart of their trap, comes Charlie. He stops at the crack in the door, and for a moment Dillon thinksâmaybe wishesâhe's going to turn around and go home, but Charlie creeps silently inside. A loud crack breaks the silence as Preston kicks the door shut. Dillon's heart beats like a jackhammer as the guttural growl spilling out of Charlie says he knows there's danger. Preston flips on a flashlight, shining it directly into Charlie's eyes, and Charlie freezes, crouched, eyes blazing red. In an instant the gunnysack is over him and Preston wraps him up.
“Now, you son of a bitch,” Preston says, “we'll teach you to mess with our dog.”
Dillon says, “Yeah, you son of a bitch.”
Charlie squirms and fights in the sack like two badgers soaked in hot tar, his voice shrill and powerful, filled with terror and rage. Preston flips the switch to the dim overhead light and slowly begins swinging the sack in a circle above his head, then faster and faster as Charlie's wails bounce off the thin plyboard walls. In a flash he slings the sack at the old wood stove in the corner, scoring a direct hit on the door handle, and the
room is filled with the sickening thud. Dillon is frozen to his spot, filled with horror and tremendous excitement, and Preston leaps for the sack just as Charlie's head appears in the opening. He stuffs the cat back inside; but Charlie gets a piece of his hand with his front claw, and Preston swears.
“Okay, you son of a bitch,” he says between gritted teeth, nostrils flaring, “if that's the way you want it . . .” He steps back and again flings Charlie hard against the stove.
Dillon says, “Yeah, you son of a bitch. We'll teach you now.”
Charlie's pitch changes. He knows, at some level where all living things know, that he's going to die, and he's scratching and clawing and screeching to the end. Preston hoists the sack, beats it endlessly against the floor, then loses his grip for an instant. Charlie struggles free. He crawls across the floor toward the doorâtoward Dillonâand Preston screams, “Get him! Get him! Kill that son of a bitch!”
And Dillon knows it's all way, way too far. He looks into Preston's eyes and sees no one thereâand Dillon himself is on the edge. The cat is a mangled, bloody mess, his timbre nearly human. Dillon is frozen, can barely breathe past the huge knot in the back of his throat.
