Sons of the 613 (19 page)

“Stabbed.”

“Yeah, right in the side. Dude with a butterfly knife.”

My particular beat-down is starting to seem less horrific.

“You know,” he says, “everyone gets beat up.”

“Not my brother.”

“Maybe not your brother. Yet. But he will, he keeps going the way he is.”

“Yeah . . .” I say, and he detects the doubt in my voice, that I'm agreeing just to indulge him.

“Everyone,” he repeats. “And the point is this. Listen to me. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“No, you're not.”

“I am.”

“Fine. Here's the point: Getting beat up doesn't make you less of a man.”

He was right: I wasn't really listening before. Now I am, because he's answering a question I didn't even know I was asking.

“Yeah, you hear me now,” he says, seeing my expression. “See, it ain't ever fair. Never. Either you've got more guys or they've got more guys, or you're bigger or he's bigger, or you're on your game or he is . . . whatever. It's never fair. And so you get your ass kicked. But it's just one of those things. It does not make you less of a man,” he repeats. “I would say it's actually part of
being
a man.”

He looks at me, dropping his head a bit to align his gaze with mine.

“You get it?” he says, and I don't expect this at all, don't expect Patrick the Ear Chewer to be like this, to out of nowhere seem like he has some intelligence and wisdom in him and to offer me this kindness. I can't help the tears welling up, and I have to drop my gaze.

“Yeah,” he says, and gives me a few pats on the back while I hang my head and sniffle. “Sucks, right?”

I nod, my head still down, wanting to say something but not wanting any sobs to come out.

“Yeah, it sucks,” he says. I hear another beer being opened.

“Here.” He holds the can of beer down low so that it appears in my field of vision. “Here,” he repeats, and I take it this time.

“Cheers.” He knocks his can against mine and drinks. I look at my beer for a moment, hesitating, and then take a sip. I don't like the flavor any more than I ever have, but it seems like the right thing to do at this moment.

“I'll tell you what I learned over the years,” says Patrick. “If you're gonna get the shit kicked out of you, there's not much you can do about it. If you can give a beating before you get one, great. But the most important thing is this: When you get stomped you can't let them know they got to you. Right? You get punched, yeah, that hurts and all that. But it's your pride they're trying to hurt. And they can't take that from you. The next time you see them, you walk around with your head up, like
Fuck you. You kicked my ass? So what. So what. I'm still the man, and you got nothing. Nothing.
Right?”

He looks at me, and I nod.

“My dad, he used to leave me all bloody and torn up, and you know what I'd say? I'd say, ‘All right, I'm heading out now, you have a good day.' Just like that. Never let him know I was scared. That's punk rock, yo. Show him, you got nothing. You say it.”

“What?”

“Say it. ‘You got nothin'.'”

“I don't know . . .”

“Try it. Trust me. ‘You got nothing.'”

“Uh . . . you got nothing?”

“No. Jesus. You got
nothing.
” He jabs a finger at me.

“You got nothing.”

“Better. Big. Like you got some balls.”

“I think that's the problem.”

“No, no, it's all about pretending. Put on the show. ‘You got nothing.'”

I can see what's going on. Patrick wants this to be a big moment. A breakthrough moment. I'm teary and we're sitting here bonding and he wants to go the next step. I appreciate his advice, but I feel ridiculous.

“Say it,” he urges.

“C'mon . . .”

“Shut up. Just say it!”

I sigh, shake my head.
Fine.

“You got nothing.”

“Bigger! You got
nothing!
”

“You got
nothing!
”

“Yeah! Again!”

He shoves me, a pop on the shoulder. I'm a little surprised.

“Say it!”

“You got
nothing!
”

I have to admit it's sort of satisfying.

“One more time!” he says, and jabs me again.

“You got NOTHING!” I say, and jab him right back.

“Yeah, man! You got nothing!”
Slam,
on the side of my shoulder.

“You got NOTHING!” SLAM! Smacking him right back.

Something odd is happening. I feel absurd, but also like I'm getting to whatever lies beyond absurd, the place where it starts to feel good.

“Again!”
Smack!

“YOU GOT NOTHING!!” I scream at the top of my lungs, and hit him as hard as I can.

“Yeah, mofo! That's the shit!” Patrick says, grinning insanely, and slams his beer can end-first against his forehead, the aluminum crumpling into a wrinkled puck. A tiny rivulet of blood starts to drip over his eyebrow. I blink at him.

“Also, later?” he says, not noticing or caring about the blood. “If you get them alone? Hit them with a frigging baseball bat or something. That's good, too.”

 

I learned a lot of things sitting with Patrick on the lawn. I learned how he got in the fight with Josh.

“Oh, yeah, that. I was going through this weird Nazi phase? I know, totally f'ed up, right? Anyways, I see your brother, and he's got the little Jew hat and everything, and I start, you know, blah blah blah,” he said, moving his hand like a talking puppet. “So pretty soon we're mixing it up, and I'm thinking it's going okay, and then real quick it wasn't. So we're in the clinch and I bit him, and then next thing I know I'm waking up in the hospital. Kid can
hit,
yo.” He stopped then and felt his jaw, like he was checking to see if it was still broken. “But you know what?” he said. “He actually came and checked on me.”

“I'm sorry. What?”

“Yeah, I guess I was out for a really long time, and the word was that I was really messed up. So I was in the hospital, and Josh lies and says he's my brother so they'll let him in, and he came to see me and make sure I was okay.”

“Josh?”

“Yeah, man. We shook hands and everything. Been tight since then.”

Another item for the Josh Mystery File.

Since he was talking, I figured I should pump him for as much information as possible. Next up: Trish.

“Yeah, she screwed him up good. Strippers, man. Never date them. Believe me—I know.”

Gotcha. Noted.
Lesley?

“She's awesome, dude. Awesome. She's smart, she's funny, she's got a future . . . That's the girl he should be with.”

“Was he ever . . . with her?”

“Not that I know.”

“Why is he back from school? What happened?”

“Not sure about that. That's Trish, too, probably. I'm telling you, she messed him up.”

Does he have some big secret plan?

Shake of the head.

“Don't know, dude. He's thinking something, though. He's quiet that way.”

Other valuable things I learned: what it's like to finally punch your abusive dad in the face and break his nose (“friggin'
awesome
”); what it's like to be in juvenile detention (“friggin'
sucks
”); and that Patrick is not, in fact, a meth dealer.

“Meth? Naw. Weed, sure. And X. But not meth. That stuff is nasty.”

“Oh. Good,” I said, because I didn't have anything else to say.

“Yeah, I don't deal meth. I mean, not anymore.”

Great.

We sat and talked until it was dark. Patrick finished the six-pack and the chips and got up twice to pee in the creek. He went up to the house and returned ten minutes later with a soggy microwaved pizza that we ate right off the cardboard. As we were eating I started to hear the familiar
boom boom boom
of Josh hitting the heavy bag in the basement.

“Man, is he pissed at me,” said Patrick.

“Me too,” I said.

Patrick chuckled, and held a hand out for a fist bump.

Finally, Patrick said good night, gave me a thump on the back, did a halfhearted job of gathering up the trash, and started his walk back up to the house. He stopped and turned.

“Hey, little man?” he said. “Don't pay your brother no mind, okay? You're a good dude.”

Then he saluted and went inside, my new, Mohawked, tattooed, drug-dealing friend. I climbed into the tent and tried to sleep, while from the house I could hear Josh hitting the bag:
boom. Boom. Boooooom.

When I wake up, the sun is above the trees, meaning it's late in the morning. Josh is nowhere in sight. I'm not running around the block or doing pushups or being forced to do something dangerous and foolhardy. I wonder if I'm dreaming.

I walk up the slope of the lawn, yawning and rubbing my eyes. I hear the sound of someone yanking repeatedly on a lawn mower cord and look over to see Mr. Olsen.

“Hi,” I say, and wave just as the engine pops and sputters to life. He waves back, mouthing something, his words inaudible over the noise of the motor. He watches me for a moment, and then before he starts pushing the mower he does a little shrug and unilateral shake of the head, the sort of movement that signifies an unvoiced
whatever—not my business.
It could be related to the fact that I'm wearing just my boxer briefs.

I go in through the downstairs back door and shower in my parents' bathroom. When I emerge from the bathroom and reach the base of the stairs I catch a whiff of nail polish remover and briefly think that maybe my mom is somehow home. And while I'm thinking that and wondering more about the dreaming thing, I hear hysterical, high-pitched yapping and claws clattering on tile. A small dog appears at the top of the stairs, its whole body quivering and jerking forward spasmodically with each sharp explosion of noise, like it's trying to power-vomit its barks at me.

YAP YAP YAP,
says the dog, then hops to the side and repeats the barking,
YAP YAP YAP,
then more hopping and yapping. I'm standing in the middle of the steps, not sure how to proceed.

“Joey!” I hear Patrick shout, his voice mixed in with a female voice shouting the same thing at the same time. “Joey!” Patrick repeats, solo this time. “Shut the hell up!”

Joey doesn't shut the hell up. There's a pause, and some canine-directed profanity, and then Patrick tromps into view and scoops up the dog in one hand.

“Oh, hey, dude!” he says to me, and tromps off again. The angle isn't so good from where I'm standing, but I catch a glimpse of what I think are tufts of tissue paper sticking out from between his bare toes.

When I get to the top of the stairs I hear the female voice again: “Doesn't that look cute?”
KeeeYOOOT,
like that, coming from the den.

“It's really cute,” agrees Lisa. The dog makes a whining noise. Patrick shushes it.

I walk to the den and look in. Patrick is stretched out on the floor on his back, holding the dog on his chest, the dog licking his face. Lisa is sitting in the comfy red chair, leaning forward a bit, her attention focused intently on her feet. Sitting cross-legged in front of her, her back to me, is a dark-haired woman who is in the process of painting Lisa's toes. She's wearing a cutoff T-shirt that reaches about to where her ribs stop, revealing the tattoo on her lower back. TRAMP, it says.

“Hey, dude,” says Patrick again. “I think there's still some eggs left, if you want them.”

Lisa and the dark-haired woman look up, and I let out an involuntary noise that sounds like
heep.
It's Terri the Mean Stripper.

“Oh, hey!” she says with a huge smile.

“Uh . . . hi?” I say.

“Isaac,” says Patrick, “this is my girlfriend, Terri.”

“We've met,” says Terri. Now Patrick's comment about dating strippers makes sense. Of course no bra. I immediately try to find someplace else to point my eyeballs.

“I'm so sorry about the other night,” says Terri. “Josh explained everything to me. I was just in a pissy mood, and I was thinking you were staring at my boobs”—hand pointing at boobs for emphasis—“which is, like, silly, because that's why people are there, and . . .”

She goes on, detailing her pissy mood that night at the strip club and some unpleasant customers and their wandering hands that led to that mood. I'm still trying not to look, my eyes roaming everywhere but Terri. The dog is practically licking the boogers from Patrick's nose. Lisa is alternating between glaring at me in wonderment and shock—you did
what?
where?
—and gazing at Terri with an expression of the very essence of pure, worshipful love. I'm standing there in a towel, looking for an opportunity to interrupt Terri so she'll stop talking that way in front of Lisa, and distracted by the dog and by the realization that Patrick does have wads of tissue stuffed between each toe, because he has bright red nail polish on his toenails that is still drying.

“—so anyways, I'm sorry for saying you had a hard-on and everything.”

“Oh my
God,
” says Lisa.

“Dude, it's totally okay if you did,” says Patrick. “Every time I go in there I do.”

“Patrick!” shrieks Terri, swatting at him, and they both start cackling. Lisa is giggling. The dog starts yapping again.

“You know she's nine, right?” I say, but they're still cackling and don't hear me. “Lisa, maybe you should, uh . . .”

“What?”

“I don't know. Go play or something.”

“No,” she says. “Terri, keep going!”

“Oh, sorry!” says Terri, Lisa's new BFF, and gets back to painting Lisa's nails.