The Body Read online

  And suddenly the moment of revenge was at hand. His stomach, loaded beyond endurance, revolted. It clenched like a strong hand encased in a slick rubber glove. His throat opened.

  Lard Ass raised his head.

  He grinned at Bill Travis with blue teeth.

  Puke rumbled up his throat like a six-ton Peterbilt shooting through a tunnel.

  It roared out of his mouth in huge blue-and-yellow glurt, warm and gaily steaming. It covered Bill Travis, who only had time to utter one nonsense syllable—“Goog!” was what it sounded like. Women in the audience screamed. Calvin Spier, who had watched this unannounced event with a numb and surprised expression on his face, leaned conversationally over the table as if to explain to the gaping audience just what was happening, and puked on the head of Marguerite Charbonneau, the Mayor’s wife. She screamed and backed away, pawing futilely at her hair, which was now covered with a mixture of crushed berries, baked beans, and partially digested frankfurters (the latter two had been Cal Spier’s dinner). She turned to her good friend Maria Lavin and threw up on the front of Maria’s buckskin jacket.

  In rapid succession, like a replay of the firecrackers:

  Bill Travis blew a great—and seemingly supercharged—jet of vomit out over the first two rows of spectators, his stunned face proclaiming to one and all, Man, I just can’t believe I’m doing this;

  Chuck Day, who had received a generous portion of Bill Travis’s surprise gift, threw up on his Hush Puppies and then blinked at them wonderingly, knowing full well that stuff would never come off suede;

  John Wiggins, principal of Gretna Elementary, opened his bluelined mouth and said reprovingly: “Really, this has . . . YURRK!” As befitted a man of his breeding and position, he did it in his own pie-plate;

  Hizzoner Charbonneau, who found himself suddenly presiding over what must have seemed more like a stomach-flu hospital ward than a pie-eating contest, opened his mouth to call the whole thing off and upchucked all over the microphone.

  “Jesus save us!” moaned Sylvia Dodge, and then her outraged supper—fried clams, cole slaw, butter-and-sugar corn (two ears’ worth), and a generous helping of Muriel Harrington’s Bosco chocolate cake—bolted out the emergency exit and landed with a large wet splash on the back of the Mayor’s Robert Hall suitcoat.

  Lard Ass Hogan, now at the absolute apogee of his young life, beamed happily out over the audience. Puke was everywhere. People staggered around in drunken circles, holding their throats and making weak cawing noises. Somebody’s pet Pekingese ran past the stage, yapping crazily, and a man wearing jeans and a Western-style silk shirt threw up on it, nearly drowning it. Mrs. Brockway, the Methodist minister’s wife, made a long, basso belching noise which was followed by a gusher of degenerated roast beef and mashed potatoes and apple cobbler. The cobbler looked as if it might have been good when it first went down. Jerry Maling, who had come to see his pet mechanic walk away with all the marbles again, decided to get the righteous fuck out of this madhouse. He got about fifteen yards before tripping over a kid’s little red wagon and realizing he had landed in a puddle of warm bile. Jerry tossed his cookies in his own lap and told folks later he only thanked Providence he had been wearing his coveralls. And Miss Norman, who taught Latin and English Fundamentals at the Gretna Consolidated High School, vomited into her own purse in an agony of propriety.

  Lard Ass Hogan watched it all, his large face calm and beaming, his stomach suddenly sweet and steady with a warm balm it might never know again—that balm was a feeling of utter and complete satisfaction. He stood up, took the slightly tacky microphone from the trembling hand of Mayor Charbonneau, and said . . .

  17

  “ ‘I declare this contest a draw.’ Then he puts the mike down, walks off the back of the platform, and goes straight home. His mother’s there, on account of she couldn’t get a babysitter for Lard Ass’s little sister, who was only two. And as soon as he comes in, all covered with puke and pie-drool, still wearing his bib, she says, ‘Davie, did you win?’ But he doesn’t say a fuckin word, you know. Just goes upstairs to his room, locks the door, and lays down on his bed.”

  I downed the last swallow in Chris’s Coke and tossed it into the woods.

  “Yeah, that’s cool, then what happened?” Teddy asked eagerly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” Teddy asked.

  “It means it’s the end. When you don’t know what happens next, that’s the end.”

  “Whaaaat?” Vern cried. There was an upset, suspicious look on his face, like he thought maybe he’d just gotten rooked playing penny-up Bingo at the Topsham Fair. “What’s all this happy crappy? How’d it come out!”

  “You have to use your imagination,” Chris said patiently.

  “No, I ain’t!” Vern said angrily. “He’s supposed to use his imagination! He made up the fuckin story!”

  “Yeah, what happened to the cat?” Teddy persisted. “Come on, Gordie, tell us.”

  “I think his dad was at the Pie-Eat and when he came home he beat the living crap out of Lard Ass.”

  “Yeah, right,” Chris said. “I bet that’s just what happened.”

  “And,” I said, “the kids went right on calling him Lard Ass. Except that maybe some of them started calling him Puke-Yer-Guts, too.”

  “That ending sucks,” Teddy said sadly.

  “That’s why I didn’t want to tell it.”

  “You could have made it so he shot his father and ran away and joined the Texas Rangers,” Teddy said. “How about that?”

  Chris and I exchanged a glance. Chris raised one shoulder in a barely perceptible shrug.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Hey, you got any new Le Dio stories, Gordie?”

  “Not just now. Maybe I’ll think of some.” I didn’t want to upset Teddy, but I wasn’t very interested in checking out what was happening in Le Dio, either. “Sorry you didn’t go for this one better.”

  “Nah, it was good,” Teddy said. “Right up to the end, it was good. All that pukin was really cool.”

  “Yeah, that was cool, really gross,” Vern agreed. “But Teddy’s right about the ending. It was sort of a gyp.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and sighed.

  Chris stood up. “Let’s do some walking,” he said. It was still bright daylight, the sky a hot, steely blue, but our shadows had begun to trail out long. I remember that as a kid, September days always seemed to end much too soon, catching me by surprise—it was as if something inside my heart expected it to always be June, with daylight lingering in the sky until almost nine-thirty. “What time is it, Gordie?”

  I looked at my watch and was astonished to see it was after five.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Teddy said. “But let’s make camp before dark so we can see to get wood and stuff. I’m getting hungry, too.”

  “Six-thirty,” Chris promised. “Okay with you guys?”

  It was. We started to walk again, using the cinders beside the tracks now. Soon the river was so far behind us we couldn’t even hear its sound. Mosquitoes hummed and I slapped one off my neck. Vern and Teddy were walking up ahead, working out some sort of complicated comic-book trade. Chris was beside me, hands in his pockets, shirt slapping against his knees and thighs like an apron.

  “I got some Winstons,” he said. “Hawked em off my old man’s dresser. One apiece. For after supper.”

  “Yeah? That’s boss.”

  “That’s when a cigarette tastes best,” Chris said. “After supper.”

  “Right.”

  We walked in silence for awhile.

  “That’s a really fine story,” Chris said suddenly. “They’re just a little too dumb to understand.”

  “No, it’s not that hot. It’s a mumbler.”

  “That’s what you always say. Don’t give me that bullshit you don’t believe. Are you gonna write it down? The story?”

  “Probably. But not for awhile. I can’t write em down rig
ht after I tell em. It’ll keep.”

  “What Vern said? About the ending being a gyp?”

  “Yeah?”

  Chris laughed. “Life’s a gyp, you know it? I mean, look at us.”

  “Nah, we have a great time.”

  “Sure,” Chris said. “All the fuckin time, you wet.”

  I laughed. Chris did, too.

  “They come outta you just like bubbles out of soda-pop,” he said after awhile.

  “What does?” But I thought I knew what he meant.

  “The stories. That really bugs me, man. It’s like you could tell a million stories and still only get the ones on top. You’ll be a great writer someday, Gordie.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, you will. Maybe you’ll even write about us guys if you ever get hard up for material.”

  “Have to be pretty fuckin hard up.” I gave him the elbow.

  There was another period of silence and then he asked suddenly: “You ready for school?”

  I shrugged. Who ever was? You got a little excited thinking about going back, seeing your friends; you were curious about your new teachers and what they would be like—pretty young things just out of teachers’ college that you could rag or some old topkick that had been there since the Alamo. In a funny way you could even get excited about the long droning classes, because as the summer vacation neared its end you sometimes got bored enough to believe you could learn something. But summer boredom was nothing like the school boredom that always set in by the end of the second week, and by the beginning of the third week you got down to the real business: Could you hit Stinky Fiske in the back of the head with your Art-Gum while the teacher was putting The Principal Exports of South America on the board? How many good loud squeaks could you get off on the varnished surface of your desk if your hands were real sweaty? Who could cut the loudest farts in the locker room while changing up for phys ed? How many girls could you get to play Who Goosed the Moose during lunch hour? Higher learning, baby.

  “Junior High,” Chris said. “And you know what, Gordie? By next June, we’ll all be quits.”

  “What are you talking about? Why would that happen?”

  “It’s not gonna be like grammar school, that’s why. You’ll be in the college courses. Me and Teddy and Vern, we’ll all be in the shop courses, playing pocket-pool with the rest of the retards, making ashtrays and birdhouses. Vern might even have to go into Remedial. You’ll meet a lot of new guys. Smart guys. That’s just the way it works, Gordie. That’s how they got it set up.”

  “Meet a lot of pussies is what you mean,” I said.

  He gripped my arm. “No, man. Don’t say that. Don’t even think that. They’ll get your stories. Not like Vern and Teddy.”

  “Fuck the stories. I’m not going in with a lot of pussies. No sir.”

  “If you don’t, then you’re an asshole.”

  “What’s asshole about wanting to be with your friends?”

  He looked at me thoughtfully, as if deciding whether or not to tell me something. We had slowed down: Vern and Teddy had pulled almost half a mile ahead. The sun, lower now, came at us through the overlacing trees in broken, dusty shafts, turning everything gold—but it was a tawdry gold, dime-store gold, if you can dig that. The tracks stretched ahead of us in the gloom that was just starting to gather—they seemed almost to twinkle. Star-pricks of light stood out on them here and there, as if some nutty rich guy masquerading as a common laborer had decided to embed a diamond in the steel every sixty yards or so. It was still hot. The sweat rolled off us, slicking our bodies.

  “It’s asshole if your friends can drag you down,” Chris said finally. “I know about you and your folks. They don’t give a shit about you. Your big brother was the one they cared about. Like my dad, when Frank got thrown into the stockade in Portsmouth. That was when he started always bein mad at us other kids and hitting us all the time. Your dad doesn’t beat on you, but maybe that’s even worse. He’s got you asleep. You could tell him you were enrolling in the fuckin shop division and you know what he’d do? He’d turn to the next page in his paper and say: Well, that’s nice, Gordon, go ask your mother what’s for dinner. And don’t try to tell me different. I’ve met him.”

  I didn’t try to tell him different. It’s scary to find out that someone else, even a friend, knows just how things are with you.

  “You’re just a kid, Gordie—”

  “Gee, thanks, Dad.”

  “I wish to fuck I was your father!” he said angrily. “You wouldn’t go around talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was! It’s like God gave you something, all those stories you can make up, and He said: This is what we got for you, kid. Try not to lose it. But kids lose everything unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks are too fucked up to do it then maybe I ought to.”

  His face looked like he was expecting me to take a swing at him; it was set and unhappy in the green-gold late afternoon light. He had broken the cardinal rule for kids in those days. You could say anything about another kid, you could rank him to the dogs and back, but you didn’t say a bad word ever about his mom and dad. That was the Fabled Automatic, the same way not inviting your Catholic friends home to dinner on Friday unless you’d checked first to make sure you weren’t having meat was the Fabled Automatic. If a kid ranked out your mom and dad, you had to feed him some knuckles.

  “Those stories you tell, they’re no good to anybody but you, Gordie. If you go along with us just because you don’t want the gang to break up, you’ll wind up just another grunt, makin C’s to get on the teams. You’ll get to High and take the same fuckin shop courses and throw erasers and pull your meat along with the rest of the grunts. Get detentions. Fuckin suspensions. And after awhile all you’ll care about is gettin a car so you can take some skag to the hops or down to the fuckin Twin Bridges Tavern. Then you’ll knock her up and spend the rest of your life in the mill or some fuckin shoeshop in Auburn or maybe even up to Hillcrest pluckin chickens. And that pie story will never get written down. Nothin’ll get written down. Cause you’ll just be another wiseguy with shit for brains.”

  Chris Chambers was twelve when he said all that to me. But while he was saying it his face crumpled and folded into something older, oldest, ageless. He spoke tonelessly, colorlessly, but nevertheless, what he said struck terror into my bowels. It was as if he had lived that whole life already, that life where they tell you to step right up and spin the Wheel of Fortune, and it spins so pretty and the guy steps on a pedal and it comes up double zeros, house number, everybody loses. They give you a free pass and then they turn on the rain machine, pretty funny, huh, a joke even Vern Tessio could appreciate.

  He grabbed my naked arm and his fingers closed tight. They dug grooves in my flesh. They ground at the bones. His eyes were hooded and dead—so dead, man, that he might have just fallen out of his own coffin.

  “I know what people think of my family in this town. I know what they think of me and what they expect. Nobody even asked me if I took the milk-money that time. I just got a three-day vacation.”

  “Did you take it?” I asked. I had never asked him before, and if you had told me I ever would, I would have called you crazy. The words came out in a little dry bullet.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I took it.” He was silent for a moment, looking ahead at Teddy and Vern. “You knew I took it, Teddy knew. Everybody knew. Even Vern knew, I think.”

  I started to deny it, and then closed my mouth. He was right. No matter what I might have said to my mother and father about how a person was supposed to be innocent until proved guilty, I had known.

  “Then maybe I was sorry and tried to give it back,” Chris said.

  I stared at him, my eyes widening. “You tried to give it back?”

  “Maybe, I said. Just maybe. And maybe I took it to old lady Simons and told her, and maybe the money was all there but I got a three-day vacation anyway, because the money never showed up. And maybe the ne
xt week old lady Simons had this brand-new skirt on when she came to school.”

  I stared at Chris, speechless with horror. He smiled at me, but it was a crimped, terrible smile that never touched his eyes.

  “Just maybe,” he said, but I remembered the new skirt—a light brown paisley, sort of full. I remembered thinking that it made old lady Simons look younger, almost pretty.

  “Chris, how much was that milk-money?”

  “Almost seven bucks.”

  “Christ,” I whispered.

  “So just say that I stole the milk-money but then old lady Simons stole it from me. Just suppose I told that story. Me, Chris Chambers. Kid brother of Frank Chambers and Eyeball Chambers. You think anybody would have believed it?”

  “No way,” I whispered. “Jesus Christ!”

  He smiled his wintry, awful smile. “And do you think that bitch would have dared try something like that if it had been one of those dootchbags from up on The View that had taken the money?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yeah, if it had been one of them, Simons would have said: ’Kay, ’kay, we’ll forget it this time, but we’re gonna spank your wrist real hard and if you ever do it again we’ll have to spank both wrists. But me . . . well, maybe she had her eye on that skirt for a long time. Anyway, she saw her chance and she took it. I was the stupid one for even trying to give that money back. But I never thought . . . I never thought that a teacher . . . oh, who gives a fuck, anyway? Why am I even talkin about it?”

  He swiped an arm angrily across his eyes and I realized he was almost crying.

  “Chris,” I said, “why don’t you go into the college courses? You’re smart enough.”

  “They decide all of that in the office. And in their smart little conferences. The teachers, they sit around in this big circle-jerk and all they say is Yeah, Yeah, Right, Right. All they give a fuck about is whether you behaved yourself in grammar school and what the town thinks of your family. All they’re deciding is whether or not you’ll contaminate all those precious college-course dootchbags. But maybe I’ll try to work myself up. I don’t know if I could do it, but I might try. Because I want to get out of Castle Rock and go to college and never see my old man or any of my brothers again. I want to go someplace where nobody knows me and I don’t have any black marks against me before I start. But I don’t know if I can do it.”