Chapter One
He let him go.
Johnny was resisting, and Randy couldn't bring himself to beat him. Not again. That's why Bob's dead. That's why Johnny's in the hospital. Because Randy refused to act. Refused to man up.
Randy grits his teeth and coils the bedspread around his palm. He's always too much in his own head. That's probably why he's always been so intent on filling it with equations and facts of history and sentence diagrams and Grand Solutions to the World's Problems. So it doesn't have room for anything else. But that trick has lost its potency, if it ever did work. Now, the thoughts he can't stop permeate from his mind to his body, and the stomach-curdling sickness of regret obliterates everything else. He's vomited twice today.
Somehow, it's not surprising that the biggest regret of his life is something he didn't do. Something he passively let. That's all he's ever done, come to think of it. His dad is right. He's a pussy.
He let Bob persuade him into heavy drinking, fast rides, and jumping kids for kicks because he liked the rush of hanging around someone dangerous, because he liked feeling like he was cool, a real man. He let Paul... But he doesn't want to think about Paul. He doesn't want to think about Bob, either. He doesn't want to think about anyone.
Even now, in his great moment of protest–his final fuck you to the whole asinine system of violence and class warfare–what is he doing but not doing? Randy doesn't know if cutting out on the rumble is the right move, but it's too late to go back on that decision now. He swallows and checks the time, the movement of his throat pressing against the top button of his collared shirt. He always wears them tightly–he likes to feel constrained. It's twelve after ten, and the mayhem has already started.
Lord knows his friends are going to ostracize him for refusing to show. Especially Dave. They'll call him a wimp, claim his (in)action is akin to spitting on his best friend's grave. Maybe they'll even teach him a lesson he'd rather not learn. But he tells himself he doesn't care. Randy's seen too much to imagine fists will solve their feud with the greasers. Drunken teenagers going at each other like wild animals won't bring Bob back or honor his memory. Dead is dead.
He finds himself reaching for the five-by-eight frame on his bedside table. He wishes he could stop torturing himself like this, but he can't. Before Bob died, this picture sat there like an afterthought, half-hidden under a spelling bee ribbon that had fallen off of his display rack above the bed. When Wanda comes every Tuesday and Thursday, she always does a quick job of cleaning, which leaves the nicknacks and photographs to collect dust. Now, the dust has been swiped off the glass, replaced instead with his oily fingerprints from the hundreds of times he's touched it lately.
They're ten years old, and it's the summer of '59, back when Bob was still called Bobby. Bobby's slinging an arm around Randy's shoulder, light streaming through a clearing in the towering trees. They're dressed in their scouting uniforms: Randy's khaki knee-highs neatly pressed, his shirt adorned with merit patches, although Bob's bare-chested. Randy can't remember why anymore, and now he'll never know. Bob's yellow neckerchief hangs sloppily down his front, blue stains dot his face and skinny chest from the prank he just pulled with the food coloring.
That was the summer they became friends, the only two boys from their elementary school sent away for three months to upstate New York near Lake Placid. They had been in the same class in fourth grade just a month before camp started, and Bob had snickered in the back of the classroom every time Randy's hand waved enthusiastically to answer a question. But somehow, all of Bob's suave contempt for the teacher's pet changed at camp, when two scared boys were sent thousands of miles away from home for the very first time, when two scared boys found comfort in each because they were the only familiar faces.
The Bobby who'd once been the ringleader of the boys who bullied Randy for being dorky became the Bobby who challenged any boy who dared do what he once had. That first summer, Bob's shadow of tuff had fallen over him, and consequentially, no one ever bothered Randy again. Later, Bob got wilder and crueler as they grew up, testing his limits but never finding them, and Randy didn't stand up against him. Not when Bob always stood up for him.
They shared a dorm at Randy's mother's request, and Randy would sneak into Bob's bunk and two of them would read Hardy Boys novels and Boys' Life back issues to each other by a flashlight, sometimes falling asleep together, much to the frustration of the troop leader. That stopped when they were thirteen, when they woke up one morning and the front of Randy's pajama pants were wet. They never talked about it, but after that, Bob didn't let Randy hold his hand when they were alone anymore.
In a lot of ways, their friendship was not merely a continuation of their reckless summers, it was their reckless summers. Bob was the same boy at eighteen that he'd been at ten. The only difference was that food fights and stealing their troop leaders' trousers and replacing the lyrics of the camp song with bawdy and scintillating verses became breaking a little kid's arm, pulling a blonde's head back by her ponytail and spitting into her mouth before coercing her into the backseat of the Mustang.
Bob couldn't differentiate between petty Boy Scout crimes and unchecked cruelties. And Randy's feeble attempts to stop him only assured Bob that he was on the right track, that his actions were impressive and daring and that secretly, Randy admired him for them. The sick thing was, Randy did admire him for them. It was a relief to let go of his seriousness, his morality, his burden of obligation, if only vicariously.
What always felt like a life-or-death situation to Randy was nothing more than a laugh to Bob. Even–Randy's throat knots and he chokes down a swallow just to think about it–even his biggest secret.
Randy had suspicions that Bob had suspicions, but he wasn't sure he knew until he really did. He's–he was–the only person to have ever walked in on them besides Darrel Curtis from the football team.
It was springtime, school was almost out. Paul had Randy on the floor of his bedroom, while his mom was downstairs setting the table, his dad on a business call down the hall. They knew they were being reckless, but at the time it didn't matter, because Paul was about to graduate, and he was going to college, and even if he was local, they knew it was over for them. The risk made it seem more real. Validated whatever they were to each other, in some strange way. They were so focused on getting off that they didn't even hear the door creak when Bob let himself in.
Afterwards, Bob and Randy didn't see each other for four days, until Bob stopped by his house again and told him they were going to The Way Out. It was an order. Randy was pretty sure he was going to get killed, that there'd be an ambush waiting for him. But it was just the two of them, Bob smirking the whole time and flirting with the waitress like he hadn't a care in the world. After they ordered, while they were eating, out of the blue Bob said, "You better start using a raincoat."
Randy, red-faced and furious, muttered through his teeth, "It's not like I can get knocked up."
"You can still get VD. You don't want the clap– trust me on that one." He chuckled to himself. Randy's reputation and maybe even his life hinged on Bob's response, and Bob thought the whole thing was a huge joke.
Randy was holding back angry tears when the waitress came by with the check. Randy started pulling out his wallet but Bob said, "I got it," and handed her enough cash to cover both of them. He was always covering both of them.
Bob said, easily, naturally, "Relax, Adderson. I'm not going to tell anybody. Think I want people to know my best friend likes to get his shit packed?"
Randy slammed back his chair, the metallic frame teetering nosily as he stood up to leave.
"Sit down." He did. Bob slid an entire bottle of Christian Brothers brandy at him under the table, cap still intact. "Thought you could use a drink." He waved a second bottle, an unopened bottle of vodka ,at him and bit at the lid, untwisting it with his teeth before spitting it out. "I could use one too." Randy had never drank so much in his whole life.
That was the night they jumped Johnny.
Randy stares at the picture of the two of them. Back when they were young and innocent, if they ever were, if that word means anything. If innocence means you're too naive, too thoughtless to understand the consequences of your actions, then Bob died an innocent. Bob lived to do and feel. It's Randy who lived to think.
Randy swallows. He's been having nightmares, waking up in a thick coat of sweat, frantically, instinctually trying to wipe it off him. In his dreams, he's covered in blood again, and it's hard to separate the night terrors from reality at first.
Truth is, that blood is never going to leave him. There's a whole part of the night that's blotted out of his memory. From the moment Bob died until the moment he found himself at the police station, soaked in his best friend's blood, staring ahead, body shaking. He smelled. There was so much blood that the strong wet metal musk of it radiated off of him. All he remembers of that missing hour is the smell.
He remembers the detective asking him the same questions over and over as he numbly stared off into the distance, unable to bring himself to say or do anything. The cop helped him get undressed, collected his clothing as evidence, gave him the state-supplied jail uniform they give to drunks who've vomited on their clothes. Randy gave his statement, heard his voice, monotone, telling the cop Johnny had been acting in self defense. On the ride home, his dad scolded him for going to the police first, when his own father is a lawyer and he should know better.
The knife cut an artery. That's why there was so much blood, why it came out so quickly, why he died so quickly, why it spurted like that. Randy's taken an anatomy class, but he would know even if he hadn't because of hunting.
His first kill was a stomach wound, the bullet penetrated the deer in its side. He was twelve years old. He remembers the deer taking off in the snow, stumbling pathetically as it tried to run, too late. He remembers trekking over with the rest of the hunting party, his father's friends congratulating him. That doe ran for hours, bleeding out slowly and painfully as they followed her trail of blood, Randy's fingers frozen stiff. He remembers how his dad taught him to field dress the deer, a nice way of saying take its guts out. He remembers how the skin looked peeled open, exposing the inside of the body, the arrangement of the organs under the ribs. It's crazy how similar people and animals are when you see them from the inside. Even the blood smells the same.
In fact, Randy's starting to think there's no difference.