The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (127 page)

Ralph was the only one still seated at the picnic table. Hunched down low, he kept eating, chewing angrily, mumbling something I couldn’t hear.

“Let’s go, Ralph,” Dell said. “Lunch is over.”

“Fuck you, lunch is over!” Drinkwater snapped back. “We got six minutes left. Don’t tell me lunch is over when it’s not over.” Ralph’s arm swept across the table, sending lunch pails and thermoses flying.

Dell stood there, glaring at Ralph. Then, without saying anything, he walked over to the picnic table, bent, and lifted it—first onto its side and then up and over. Ralph lay splayed on the ground, his legs still hooked beneath the bench where he’d been sitting.

Dell squatted down next to him. “Now, unless I died and they made
you
foreman,” he said, “you get that shit-brown Indian ass of yours back to work or I’ll have you off this crew before you can count to ten. Come to think of it, I got a
special
job for a couple of tough guys like you and Dicky Bird over there. I got a
special
assignment for you two.”

Dell put Drinkwater and my brother in the muckiest, most bug-infested part of the reservoir—an area I had overheard Lou Clukey tell him earlier we wouldn’t have to tackle.

I
almost
spoke. My mouth opened and closed a couple of times,
but nothing would come out. Dell’s bullying felt just like Ray’s and the familiar dread fell over me, settling in my gut, my arms and legs. Paralyzing me. So instead of speaking up, I grabbed a scythe, walked to the meadow he’d said to cut, and started swinging. Every blade of grass I whacked that afternoon was Dell’s throat. Ray’s. Every swipe I took cut down the two of them.

At the end of the day, Drinkwater and Thomas climbed up into the back of the truck with Leo and me. They were both filthy with mud, studded with scabs and bug bites. Nobody said anything for miles. Then, without warning, Ralph’s boot slammed so hard against the tailgate that, for a second, I thought the truck had hit something. Dell looked back in the rearview mirror to see what the racket was. “That’s right, cocksucker, you
better
watch your back,” Ralph said, glaring back at Dell’s reflection. “You
better
keep your eye on me from now on.”

When we got back to the yard that afternoon, instead of driving right into the garage the way he usually did, Dell pulled off to the side of the road, cut the engine, and came around to the back.

“I got one thing to say about what happened out there today at lunchtime,” he informed us. “I’ll say it to all of you at once so there’s no misunderstanding. What goes on in our crew stays in our crew. Understand? It ain’t nobody’s business but ours.”

His eyes bounced nervously from Leo to Ralph to my brother, then landed on me.

“Oh, yeah?” I said.

“That’s right. What we do is
our
business. Not Clukey’s. Not anybody’s on one of the other crews. My guys and I cover for each other.” He nudged his chin toward my brother. “Take that stunt he pulled out there today. Pulling his pants down and crying like a little baby. They’d love a story like that around this place. But they’re not going to hear about it.”

“You
told
him to do it,” I reminded him. “You
goaded
him into it.”

He took a step toward me, glaring so hard and hatefully that I had to look away. “Or take all that dope you guys been smokin’ on
the job all summer long, Dicky Boy,” he said. “You guys been high as kites half the summer. Having yourselves a great old time with your mary-j-uana. You think I didn’t know it? You think you fooled old Dell? Well, guess what? You didn’t. And if Clukey ever found out you been sucking on those funny little cigarettes, next thing you know, the cruiser and your old man would
both
be down here. But what we do is our business, nobody else’s. See? Long as you guys get your work done, I don’t see nothing. Understand? One hand washes the other.”

The four of us sat there, dumbfounded. Then Drinkwater hopped over the side of the truck and started walking away.

“Hey, big shot!” Dell called after him. Ralph didn’t answer. Didn’t look back. “What about your time card, wiseguy? How’d you like to lose a day’s pay?”

Without turning back, Ralph raised his arm, his middle finger, high into the air. The four of us watched his cocky gait, his exit around a hedge.

Dell got back in the truck and started her up.

“Can you believe that fucking prick?” Leo whispered to me. “He’s been
spying
on us.” I told him to just shut the fuck up.

Thomas quit. He didn’t talk it over with me or ask me to go into Lou Clukey’s office with him or anything. Dell pulled the truck into the garage, cut the engine, and Thomas just made a beeline for Clukey’s office. He was in there for less than three minutes and then he was out again. And that was it.

I couldn’t walk back home with him—couldn’t stomach his pissing and moaning or his I-told-you-so’s about the dope smoking. Nor was I about to forgive him for the way he’d degraded himself in front of the other guys. So I walked in the opposite direction, down Boswell, onto South Main, and into downtown. I ended up in front of the pinball machine at Tepper’s Bus Stop. I didn’t want to think about anything. I just wanted to slam those little silver balls, jerk knobs, pound buttons, grab the sides of that fucking machine and rattle it. Which I did a little too vigorously, I guess. Old Man Tepper came out from behind the
counter and asked what the hell was the matter with me. What was the big idea, thinking I had the right to destroy someone else’s property? What was the
matter
with me?

What was the matter with him? What was going on?

By the time I got home, Thomas had already opened his mail from the university and learned that his roommate for the 1969–70 school year was a transfer student from Waterbury named Randall Deitz.

“This is just great,” he groaned, waving the letter in my face. “This is just what I needed after today. Some stupid secretary makes a mistake, and now we have a big mess to fix!” He was pacing the kitchen floor just the way he’d done in our dorm room the year before—getting riled up all out of proportion.

Ma was at the stove, making sauce for supper. “Okay, calm down, honey,” she told Thomas. “Maybe it’s something you can get straightened out over the phone.”

“Nobody knows what they’re doing at that stupid school! We’ll probably have to go through this big rigmarole just to undo one person’s stupid mistake.”

“There’s no mistake,” I said.

“First they’ll tell you to go to
this
office! Then when you get there, they’ll say, ‘Oh, no, you don’t want
this
office. You want this
other
office!’”

“There’s no mistake,” I repeated. Thomas and Ma both looked at me, waiting for the punch line. Unable to look at my brother, I addressed Ma instead. “I’m not rooming with him. . . . I’m rooming with Leo.”

I could feel, rather than see, the panic taking over my brother. He flopped back on one of the kitchen chairs and crossed his arms over his chest. He craned his neck as far away from me as it would go.

“When did you decide this, Dominick?” Ma asked me.

“I don’t know. A while back. We went up to school and put in a request.”

“We?” Thomas said. “You and Leo? The two of you just snuck up there behind my back and switched things on me?”

“It’s not that big a deal,” I said, still looking at my mother. I watched her face go pale. Saw the fear creep into her eyes. “You asked me to room with him freshman year and I
did.
. . . I’ve been
meaning
to say something. I just . . . I’ve just been so busy.”

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “Tell your brother.”

I turned to Thomas. “It’ll be
good
for you, man. You’ll meet new friends. How do you know this new guy—what’s his name? Randall? How do you know he’s not a great guy? He’ll probably be a
much
better roommate than I ever was. We’re too close, you and me. We get on each other’s nerves.”

He sat there, pouting, saying nothing. A minute or more went by.

“Well,” Ma said, “why don’t you two boys go upstairs and get cleaned up? Supper’s going to be ready in about half an hour, soon as your father wakes up. Thomas, do you want ziti or shells? You pick.”

He didn’t answer her.

“I don’t really have time to eat, Ma,” I told her. “I’m going out.”

“Who are you going out with?” Thomas said. “Your two little buddy-buddies from work?”

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m going out with my girlfriend. Is that all right with
you
?” I was planning my escape as I spoke. Dessa was working that night at the Dial-Tone. Her shift was over at 1:00
A.M.
Maybe I’d ride down there on my bike. Surprise her.

“Oh, you mean Mystery Woman?” Thomas said. “The girl you’re too ashamed to have your family even meet?”

“I’m not ashamed to have you meet her. You want to meet her? Fine. You can meet her.”

“Okay, when?”

“I don’t know. Sometime.”

His laugh was sarcastic. I stood there, watching him fiddle with the salt and pepper shakers—making little piles on the table. “Traitor,” he mumbled.

“Look, Dominick, you have to eat
something,
” Ma said. “I’ve got eggplant in the refrigerator and there’s some grinder rolls left over from yesterday. Why don’t I fry up some peppers and make you a couple of sandwiches? Come on. Get me the provolone.”

That was Ma for you: pissed and hurt but ready to feed you, anyway. Ready to make you feel even
more
guilty.

I headed toward the upstairs bathroom, then stopped at the doorway and looked back at Thomas. “Hey, numskull?” I said. “You want first shower?” I meant it as a kind of apology, I guess—to show him I wasn’t a complete bastard. Fighting over who had first shower had been a ritual of ours since we were kids.

But Thomas ignored me. He picked up the salt shaker and started talking to it. “Hello, I’m Thomas Dirt,” he said. “Feel free to lie to me and walk all over me. Everyone does it. It’s fun!”

It was just this side of a suicide mission: riding down to the beach in a Friday night drizzle on a bike with no light and no reflectors. The trip was an hour and a half’s worth of honking horns and cars swerving away at the last second and drivers cursing me out. Although I knew damn well I wouldn’t mention anything to Dessa about what had happened that day at work, I imagined myself telling her all about it. Saw the two of us at one of the back tables. Felt the sympathetic touch of her hand on my face, the compassionate kisses she’d give me. All along the way, I comforted myself with her imaginary understanding.

The place was packed. Dessa acted surprised, not happy, to see me. “It’s a zoo here tonight,” she said. “I won’t even be able to talk to you until quitting time. God, you’re soaked.”

“Dance with me,” I said.

“I
can’t
dance with you, Dominick. I’m working.”

“Just one dance.”

“Dominick,
no.
I have orders to pick up. I have tables that have been waiting—”

I walked away from her explanation and grabbed a seat at the bar, ordered a beer. Later, on her break, she handed me the keys to her mother’s car. When the manager wasn’t looking, the bartender sold me a two-thirds-empty bottle of vodka and I headed outside. I threw my bike in the trunk and slumped down in the driver’s seat to wait for her. Played the radio, swigged vodka. Watched the windows fog up. I wanted a joint. I wanted Dessa. I kept trying
not
to see my
brother out there at the reservoir, bawling like an idiot, his pants down around his knees. . . .
Traitor,
he’d called me.
Hello, I’m Thomas Dirt.
Jesus, how long was I supposed to keep carrying him? When was I ever going to be able to get on with my own life? Starting in September, that was when. Fuck him. Let him sink or swim. I closed my eyes. Shifted around to get more comfortable. The vodka, the thump of the ocean, the beat of the rain on Dessa’s mother’s car roof made me sleepy. . . .

By the time Dessa nudged me awake again, it was after two in the morning. “Hi,” she said. I yawned and stretched and kissed her. She had work stink on her: beer and booze, cigarette smoke in her hair. When I went to rub her leg, my hand ran into the tumor of tip money in her jeans pocket.

I hadn’t seen her in a week. Hadn’t screwed her in two. Since the Constantines’ return, we’d been reduced to making out in parking lots. But that would change in a couple of weeks. Dessa was a supervisor at her dorm, which meant a single room and a double bed. If that car deal went through with Dell, then Dessa and I would be stretched out up there in Boston instead of sitting inside her mother’s Chrysler-fucking-Newport.

“Guess what?” she said.

“What?”

“My father’s not speaking to me. We had a fight.”

“About what?” I said.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. . . . Well, yes it does. It was about you.”

“
Me?
What about me?”

“Oh, it was my own stupid fault. I accidentally left my dialpack out on my bathroom counter. My mother saw them.”

“Your birth control pills? Oh,
shit.
”

“So instead of saying something to
me,
like a
normal
mother would, she went to my father instead. He came into my room last night and said he wanted to talk to me. I was embarrassed to death, but I said, ‘Look, Daddy, I’m a big girl. I can make my own decisions about things.’ So then he starts in on you.”

She pulled in closer to me. Put her head on my shoulder.

I asked her what he’d said.

“That he had nothing against you personally, but if all you were planning to do with your life was teach, then maybe I should think twice before I got myself pregnant and realized I’d sold myself short.”

I cleared my throat. Somehow, I was feeling both drunk and hung over. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

“Oh, Daddy thinks I should be the wife of a doctor or a businessman or someone who owns property. I pointed out to him that
I
was training to be a teacher, too, and he said, oh, teaching was a perfectly acceptable job for a woman. Women weren’t expected to provide for a family. Men were. Then, I just let loose. I couldn’t help it. I was so
pissed
! I told him I judged people by who they were inside, not by their income potential. Money might be
his
god, I told him, but it wasn’t mine. That made him
furious.
He told me it was a sorry day when daughters spoke to their fathers so disrespectfully—when children had that little gratitude for what had been provided them. So now we’re not even speaking. And it was all . . . If my mother had just come to me about the pills instead of . . . Sometimes I
hate
him, Dominick!”