No Country: A Novel (51 page)

•  •  •

Y
EAH,
I
WAS
dropping the occasional grade, but I had acquired some important skills like smoking pot to calm my nerves. By the time they pushed me up to tenth grade, I was older and richer than anybody else in school; I had figured out how to sell the shit
rather than just buy it. I could tell the different currency notes—Jacksons, Franklins, et cetera—by instinct. They paid me, hastily, surreptitiously, the notes rolled up, scrunchy tight: I put them in my pocket. I just knew if they’d paid me enough. Shit, I was severely challenged, but my arithmetic of touch was perfection itself.

I also discovered that if someone rattled off a bunch of numbers, I could total them just like that. I can add, multiply, divide, like 9764852 divided by 1597648 is 6.1120171—see—correct to the seventh decimal, all in less than a second. Don’t ask me how I do this. I just can. It ain’t worth much anyway. Anyone with a five-buck calculator can do exactly the same shit. But it’s the same kind of knowing that tells me what to bend and coax when fixing an engine, or makes the wood yield itself to my hands. It’s a rhythm, man—a rhythm, that’s all.

I can’t seem to make it past the eleventh grade, although I’m amazed I’ve come this far. But I have no illusions. I am scrawny, sure, but I have grown my carapace. I dye my hair jet-black. I wear stomping boots. I can light my cigarettes in a rainstorm. I was the first in our school to accept Marley as my personal savior. I just understood why Peter Townshend would need to smash his guitar. Yeah, man, for sure everyone loved the Beatles. But here, upstate, the kids are still listening to Belafonte and his tired bananas, for fuck’s sake, while I had discovered the Ramones.

Yeah, a certain kind of female digs me, begging for smokes and my ant-egg pills. I was sucked off long before the jocks got beyond flicking towels at each other’s arse. I wear my black leather jacket, my tribal patches. My tribe of the lost valley, the church of the pissed night, sailors of the drowned boat. Oooh, Billy, she whispers in my ear, you’re cool. Yeah, I know the routine. I give her what she wants. She is usually inert by the time I enter.

See, I have friends—sure—lots of them. I don’t have to tell lame jokes. Any girl who wants the shit knows to come over to Billy the Kid. The ones with hollow breath, blue nostrils, begging mouths. They are broke, need grass or more, always telling me they are my best friends—
luv ya to death Billy, my billabong, my main man!
They sidle over, mumbling, numb minds, and in their own ways, severely challenged, in manners I recognize well. I dispense my little ant-egg pills, spread a little joy, dude. My kindred. They smell bad—of good intentions, old vomit, self-pity, fake affection, and crap. I smell too, of contempt, anger, and the knowledge that I am what Dad calls me: Illiterate Dogshit. How could I—and the rest of the world—possibly smell otherwise? Yeah, you tell me.

Sure, I could leave high school any day I want to, but I don’t. I have nothing better to do, and after all, this is where my clientele is, where the babes are, my corridors of power and commerce. But my best friends are Jack Daniels and Tanqueray, the djinn.

When Jack or the djinn lurch me about, I hide where I can—under cemetery trees, behind the high school parking lot, against the metal bins of the PAL League—but mainly in the tiny loft built into the back of our garage at 166 Haddon Lane. This is where I hid my treasures ever since I could walk. Only our cat Russ comes and joins me there sometimes, nocturnal and golden, sharing my pulsating darkness, silently watchful through yellow slit eyes. Oh yeah, I talk to him. Russie, Russie, burning bright, as I bungle through the night; but he is a gentleman cat who disapproves of my cigarette smoke.

Here long ago I had stashed away Dad’s kidney stones which he brought back from the hospital—a trophy I stole—the only time he was ever sick. I want to crush them to bits some day, to celebrate something. I don’t know what, not yet.

•  •  •

A
T THE END
of the summer, on a sweaty day in August, Sandy got married. I threw up on the hood of the rented limousine that whisked Gus and Sandy off to the airport for their honeymoon in Myrtle Beach, after which they were relocating to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Just think of the name:
Scrraant-tton
. Oh yeah, like a broken engine.

I had flunked—so, eleventh grade again—and at the beginning of term, I went and sat down on the only empty seat next to some girl. Hair in two shiny pigtails, dark eyes, skin like a Hershey bar.

“Billy,” I said to her, wondering where she was from. I had never noticed her before. It seemed unlikely she would become a customer. But hey, you never can tell.

“What?” she whispered back.

“Billy Swint,” I said.

“Devi,” she said.

“Hey, Debbie,” I said, rolling the word out like a bag of wet laundry.

“No,” she said, looking at me with eyes black as dominos. She reminded me of calm water, despite myself.

“What?” I said, disarmed by her smile.

“Devi,” she said, “not Debbie.”

“Davey?” I teased her.

“It’s Devika,” she said firmly, “Devi, for short.” Her breath smelt lovely, spicy, a cool unfamiliar aroma. I inhaled the fragrance. She looked directly at me, and without saying anything reached into her school bag and handed me a small beige pod, seams on its skin with a tinge of green. I split its skin open and found three rows of shiny black seeds.

“Never seen anything like this,” I said. Never met anyone like her either, I thought.

“Chew it,” she said. I put it in my mouth, skin and all, letting it roll on my tongue, then bit down. The tiny pods burst with a lovely smell which filled my mouth.

“Cool,” I agreed. Devi smiled back at me. I was grinning like an idiot. “I’ll give you some free grass.”

“No, thank you,” she said, “I don’t . . .” She shook her head. The pigtails moved from side to side. “It’s good stuff. Free,” I insisted, “really”—my $10 twist.

Just then Mr. Bottgriend appeared out of nowhere and grabbed me by the hand and began calling loudly for Miss Lonnie-Marge McBaggott, our assistant principal. She had creased cheeks, folded like saggy balloons on either side of her narrow nose, and pink nostrils like slits in ham. Her open mouth and pointy tongue made a perfect
Q
of surprise.

“Billy Swint!” she wheezed when she saw what was in my palm. Griendy’s grip was a moist octopus.

“Mr. Bottgriend gave it to me,” I said smoothly.

“What!” Miss McBaggott almost collapsed under the weight of my confession. She raised her hands up to her limp hair in despair. “Donnie, sweetie, you promised,” she half-hissed, half-croaked in reproach, looking at Griendy’s ample face. I see him looming over me, a large pudding with nostrils.

“Bobo darling, you believe this turd?” he snorted.

“Ask Devi,” I said coolly.

“Debbie?” Griendy asks.

“Devi,” I corrected him.

“What?” he said, thrown out of stride. In that moment of his inattention, I snatched my hand away and threw the maryjane out
the window, where it would fall on the walkway one floor below. I was home safe. I knew that a good Billy Swint puffie had no shelf life at all—they get picked up instantly.

I was told to go down to the office, where a huge fracas ensued over my fate. Teachers milled about, and everybody—including Sammy Budds, the custodian, who was one of my business rivals—joined in. While they were all raging in there, I lolled on the chair outside. Devi walked in.

“They’ll kick you out, Billy Swint,” she said.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, and then added, “Devika.”

“That’s perfect,” she said, “that’s exactly how to say it. Devika Rathnam Mitra,” she said to me: Black eyes, dimple on left brown cheek, pigtails, sweet breath.

“That’s the name of the pod?” I teased her.

“No, silly—the pod is cardamom.” She smiled, gave me three more, and left.

I remembered it for years:
Devika Rathnam Mitra
. I had actually made a friend, although it was only for a day, my last day at school. So, school was over. I was relieved, actually. This was all the prom I’d get.

Newly emancipated by the school system, I began my walk back to my house in a dead end, what I called my cool-de-sack. On this beautiful September day, as the haze of summer hung in the air, and the trees were waiting to break into flaming colors of early fall, I felt ready to begin my life for real.

I remembered I had two bottles hidden in the garage. A half-full Jack Daniel’s, one full perfect immaculate Gin. I would never have to spell. Goodbye Twenty-Six: Fuck ya all.

•  •  •

T
HINGS HAD BEEN
changing at home. Archie had got into some kind of money mess. He didn’t say what. I didn’t ask. 166 would have to be foreclosed, so my cool-de-sack was gone with the wind. We would have to move across town, to an apartment. Mom had to trade in her lovely big Buick for a Ford Shit Pinto. I heard Mom crying one day, because Archie wanted her to give him her precious pendant necklace. He wanted to sell it, but Mom didn’t give up, crying and moaning, keeping a firm grip on her gold jewelry.

Russ, that grand old purrer, got sick and died. In the last month he used to pad around in a circle, as if he had turned into a slow top. Fuck, it was heartbreaking to see him so sick. Sandy was long gone. Archie wasn’t going to have me hanging about, getting sloshed. “You’re paying by the week, you dimwit squatter.” That’s how Archie put it.

I have problems reading, yeah, but the writing on the fucking wall had been staring me in the face. I had expected Mom to stop him from kicking me out, but she didn’t have the balls to say a word. Well, fuck all that. It was time to get out. I was the last extra guy standing. Hell, it was high time. I stole her pendant necklace—well, I had to inherit something, didn’t I? I’d let Big Archie take the blame, I thought with satisfaction. She’d never dare accuse him to his face, I knew.

I left home for the big world out there. Well, that just meant that I took that job at the convenience store, working nights. With a little dealing on the side, especially at the store in the late hours, I managed okay. I moved into my own digs across town. I could now do some serious time with Mr. Jack and Miss Djinn.

The Great Swint did something typical before he had to vacate the house. He chopped down the horse chestnut tree in our
backyard. My Billy Tree. It was in full bloom, with white candles all over it among broad green leaves.

But in my nightmares, I was the one doing it. Hacking him down.

•  •  •

T
HE DAYS HURTLE
sideways into my mind, some sticking to a gummy part, some shearing off. For the life of me, I can’t always tell the difference between what did happen and what could happen—what could not, or absolutely did not. My mind is a scarred thing in black space, spinning, bombarded by shards of memory, asteroids of words screamed at me: Hard to tell the difference.

I lost the tip of one digit somewhere when I was jacked or ginned, sliced off at a car door, or maybe someone bit it off. Was it me? Hey,
mea culpa
, whatever the fuck it was. The sharp acid churns and boggles in my throat. My fingers smell rotten from wiping vomit. My memory is a muddied quilt. I wrap myself in it. I rock, I tilt. I lie down swaddled in it, head slosh-full of memories. Where have I been, what brought me here? I sleep. I wake. I rummage about and find my Jack bottle and my Gin bottle and I go up their hill—and then all of me comes tumbling after. I bury my head in the crook of my arm and cradle myself in the darkness. Rockabye Billy, the cradle will fall . . . I wake again. I wonder how the day has passed, and it is night again.

I sit huddled, waiting for a kind of knowledge that waking brings at the end of a blind binge. There is no past or future. Just the here, the now. And the bottle is empty. Two weeks to payday. Time to report at the store.

•  •  •

I
WAS QUIETLY
transferring a couple of quarts—Jack and his identical twin—when Paulie, the manager, nabbed me.

“Jig’s up, kid,” he said, putting both thumbs on his pants, as if the poor shit was in a western.

“Okay, I quit,” I said, taking the bottles out of my jacket.

“Ain’t going to be that easy, Billy. I’m calling the police.”

“Oh come on. Everyone does this, Paulie.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Paulie, I won’t come back here, okay? Don’t call the cops.”

“I won’t, if you promise me something. I know you’re not a bad sort, Billy.”

I was ready to swear to any crapola to get him off my back. I just didn’t want the cops checking out my digs. I had what was left of my stock taped behind the sink. Not to mention Mom’s locket.

“I want you to go to a meeting.”

“What! Like a parent-teacher thing? You’re shitting me, right, Paulie?”

“You heard me. I’m totally serious. It’ll do you a world of good. Trust me.”

“What kind of meeting? Chrissake.”

“It’s AA. You know, Alcoholics Anonymous. Just go there three days. Go with an open mind, Billy. That’s my condition. Or I pick up that phone. Your call.”

“Okay, okay, yeah,” I hear myself saying. The fucking comedian.

•  •  •

H
ERE
I
AM
for my sixth meeting.

I sit in this church basement, a surveyor of cracked linoleum, sipper of tired coffee. I smoke Winston after Winston, drowning
the stubs in my Styrofoam cups. We are the underground nation, friends of Dr. Bob. We do not aspire to the Ten Commandments, we have just one Thou Shalt Not, and twelve unsteady steps to get there. The first few times I sat at the back, as close to the wall as paint. I had been surprised to find Paulie there. But he made no move to recognize me. I guess I was grateful.

A bent man with a boiling cough came over to me on my third visit. He had a lined face, observant eyes. “Jerome,” he said. “You are welcome here.”

“I’m not Jerome,” I said, “I’m Billy Swint.”

“We don’t have no use fer last names here, Billy,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette, burbling in phlegmy camaraderie. “I’m Jerome.”