Townie_ A Memoir Part 7

BY MID-FALL, Connolly had paid a carpenter to come and build a ring. It was just a plywood platform on two-by-fours on concrete, but he had the carpenter put in four posts and he padded them and ran regulation boxing rope from one to the other. In the corner was a crate of old leather boxing gloves, most of them the smaller eight ounces used in fights, but no headgear, and he told us that unless we wanted to lose some teeth we should go buy our own mouthguards.

Word got out Connolly had built a ring, and now boxers from the Y or other towns were stopping in to look at it. I was usually lifting out on the floor when they came in, their noses flattened, their eyes narrowed under punch-thickened eyebrows. One was Ray Duffy. Everybody said the Duffys were crazy as the Murphy brothers but tougher. There was the story of Ray down in a bar on Was.h.i.+ngton Street. Two men slighted him somehow and he stood there listening, then knocked them both out, one punch each.

Now Ray was coming in a few days a week. He rarely hit the heavy bag or lifted weights. Instead he'd step into the ring in his street clothes and shadowbox, his punches clean and efficient.

THE FIRST one I boxed in the ring was Bill Connolly's nephew Brent. Brent was ten or twelve pounds heavier than I was, and he had straight black hair and olive skin, acne scars on his cheeks. Except for Bill, he hit the bag better than anyone, his punches hard and crisp, his combinations fluid, his footwork and bobbing and weaving like some masculine dance. Because we were close to the same weight, and because Bill wanted to see how each of us would do, he matched us up on a gray Friday afternoon in October.

He wrapped our wrists and hands, helped us lace our gloves, made sure we had mouthguards, then ducked out of the ring. He studied his wrist.w.a.tch and called, "Time!"

I expected to get beaten up, my heart pulsing hard in my temples as Brent and I raised our gloves and moved to the center of the ring. Bill had taught me to keep the right up to block any head shots, to jab, then move constantly to avoid being a target, to wait for my opening. Brent jabbed first and I blocked it with my left, then jabbed back and popped him in the forehead. His eyes blinked and I blinked too, a ripple of heat pa.s.sing through my cheeks at what I'd just done. He jabbed again and as I blocked it, a right slammed into my right glove and smashed me in the eyebrow. I moved to the left and jabbed him two more times in the forehead, his eyes tearing up. His mouth looked swollen from the mouthguard and I knew mine did too and it was harder to breathe with it. Brent stepped in and threw a straight right I weaved away from, then got off a left hook into his ribs, bright green flas.h.i.+ng through my brain. I brought my left back up from where I'd dropped it, from where Brent had seen his opening and connected with a right.

"Shtick and move, Andre! Shtick and move! Brent, keep your right up, kid!"

I jabbed again and again, trying to do it from my feet up, putting some kind of snap into it, and maybe because I was an inch or two taller than Brent, it wasn't hard to hit him, his eyes pink and wet now, as if he was about to yell or cry, and I did not feel badly about what I was doing to him. I only wanted to keep jabbing and scoring points, to get him so frustrated he'd throw a wild punch and leave himself open for something more dangerous than a jab.

"Time!"

Brent turned and walked back to his corner, pulling at the laces with his teeth. He ducked between the ropes and yanked off his gloves, and Bill followed him. "Where're you goin', Brent? That was only one round, kid."

"I gotta go to work." Brent dropped his gloves in the crate and unwrapped his hands and walked out.

I was still in the ring, sweating, my breathing back down to normal again. Ray Duffy stood from where he'd been sitting against the wall. I hadn't known he was there. He said to Bill, "The bag don't hit back."

Bill nodded once. He smiled over at me. "That was a good shtart. I think you got the killer instinct, kid."

Which meant it didn't bother me too much to hurt somebody, that seeing his pain did not make me slow down or stop.

TWO OR three times a week I'd spar whoever was around. Many times it was Bobby, who'd come back to the gym and was doing his own lifting routine. He'd gained some weight, but he looked happy and in love, and sparring him was like fighting somebody crazy. He fought with both hands down at his sides, smiling at you even after you'd popped him in the face, then he'd s.h.i.+ft to the side and his right would swing up hard and fast, and once I wasn't able to avoid it and it caught me in the cheek and knocked me four feet back against the ropes. Bobby moved in to finish me off, but Bill blew the whistle to stop it. He did that often because we still didn't have any headgear and now guys were climbing into the ring with others not even close to their weight, and he was afraid of getting sued. "I could lose this place, boys, sho take it eashy, all right?"

He was in danger of losing it anyway. Except for Sam and me, Bobby Schwartz and six or seven other guys from the neighborhood, his gym just didn't have that many members. He didn't have the cash to take out an ad in the paper, and he wasn't even in the phone book. He often looked worried about this, walking around the floor holding his members.h.i.+p notebook, its pages largely empty.

One afternoon I walked by the room where he slept. Usually a couple of sheets hung over the opening, but now they were down and I could see the mattress on the floor, the unzipped sleeping bag, a stained pillow. There was a mini-fridge and a hot plate, a jar of instant coffee, a box of Lucky Charms and a can of Campbell's soup.

By late winter, Bill Connolly's gym would go out of business, and he would close his doors and move north to Maine. Years later, we would hear he'd died, something to do with his liver or kidneys. But none of that had happened yet, and it was a Sat.u.r.day morning in the fall of 1976, I'd just turned seventeen, and Bill had arranged an exhibition of his fighters and his new ring. He'd had flyers made up, and he walked all over downtown, dropping them off at shops and barrooms. That morning, he bought a coffeemaker and brewed a pot and set it on a card table beside a bucket of doughnuts. Maybe this was his way of drumming up business, or maybe he was just proud of us and his new ring and wanted to show it off, or both, but he laughed a lot, and slapped people hard on the back, eight or nine real boxers from real gyms in other towns along the river like Lawrence and Lowell.

One of the first fights was Bill's nephew Brent and Sam Dolan. Sam had his s.h.i.+rt off and looked like carved ice and made the rest of us look good. Next to him Brent looked puffy, his olive skin yellow. Bill called "Time!" and they danced around each other, trading jabs before Brent threw a left hook and missed and Sam hit him hard in the face with two short rights, Brent falling back, his eyes wide, his mouthguard loose, and Bill called "Time!" though the round had just begun. "Eashy, boys, it's just an exhibition. Andre, you go next."

"Who with?"

"Sam."

I didn't want to fight him. I was sure he would kill me, and even if he didn't, I did not want to punch the face of my friend. But we couldn't embarra.s.s Bill in front of the few who had come, so I stepped into the ring, eight-ounce gloves laced tightly over my wrapped hands and wrists, and Bill called "Time!"

Boxing is intimate. The fighter across from you becomes nothing but eyes. You look at nothing else. Your peripheral vision picks up his gloves, his bare shoulders, sometimes even his footwork. But you watch his eyes because they can show you something just before he shoots off a jab or is trying to find his range against you, to set his feet and fire off a combination; his eyebrows may lift slightly, and you can see how his pupils sometimes darken with emotions fighters are supposed to be above: hurt, frustration, fear, rage, all of which can muddy your judgment, make you swing wild when, instead, you should be minimizing damage as best you can, waiting for your move. And so you never think how dangerous this is, that a motivated punch from 600-pushup Sam Dolan could possibly kill you, or at least knock you down and out.

As soon as Sam and I got within punching range, I started jabbing, sticking and moving to keep him off balance and avoid getting hit. The first few jabs, Sam looked surprised I was actually punching him. Then he looked hurt. Then angry. He stepped in and threw a right hook, and when I weaved away from it I could feel the wind behind it. If I'd thought about that connecting, I would have stopped and walked out of the ring, but I kept jabbing. Sam's eyes blinked every time. I never realized how green they were, like mine, and now they were dark and s.h.i.+ning and looked betrayed. He swung at me harder and I was just able to avoid his glove and pop him in the face again. Somebody yelled something from outside the ring. Another voice said, "Quit dancing. Throw a combination."

I knew he was right, but I couldn't do it. You left yourself open when you threw combinations, and I didn't want to get hit even once by Sam. I jabbed him twice in the nose, and he waded in and threw a cross that knocked my glove into my shoulder and spun me halfway around and Bill called "Time!"

He ducked into the ring. "That's good, you two. But shomebody's gonna get hurt."

Me, he meant. A couple men clapped halfheartedly. Others stood there looking at us like we'd disappointed them, that they'd come here to see a real exchange, not this. Sam and I gave our gloves to Bill to give to two more fighters, two kids from the avenues, and we stood side by side for the rest of the exhibition, but something had been wounded between us.

I knew in a fight on the street he would've beaten the s.h.i.+t out of me. But I'd been able to frustrate him, and standing there beside the coffee and doughnuts I tried to ignore the feeling I'd just achieved something by hurting my best friend.

6.

ONE LATE FALL afternoon, I came home from the gym to the smell of cooking. The house was quiet, no day party going on, and in the kitchen Suzanne and Jeb were standing by the stove. There was the lick of blue flames under a black iron skillet, hot oil popping and spattering under the rising smoke. Suzanne glanced over at me. "We chopped these tortillas out of the freezer. They're the only thing to eat in this whole f.u.c.king house." Jeb sprinkled salt on one and handed it to me and I blew on it and ate it. Suzanne stood back from the stove and wiped her eyes, then pushed a fork into the skillet, the grease crackling, the smoke thicker now.

Jeb and I used to sit in Cleary's kitchen, his mother pa.s.sed out in the front room, and eat whatever he put on the table for us: cheese and crackers, Devil Dogs, peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly and bread we made sandwiches with, bags of potato chips and cans of c.o.ke or Pepsi. Most of it was junk, and we knew it but didn't care. Once he was in our kitchen and opened the fridge and saw its bright empty shelves and said, "What happened to the food?"

What could we say to that? Even when Pop had lived with us, there hadn't been enough for snacks like Cleary had. And now there wasn't enough for three meals a day either. It's something we'd all gotten used to, that hollowness in the veins, the nagging feel there was always just a bit too much air behind your ribs.

But some times in the month were better than others. Right after Mom got paid she'd go to the grocery store, and while there was never food to eat between meals, there seemed to be enough for the meals themselves. These were still the ones she could make from a can or something frozen, something quick so we didn't eat too late, but sometimes Bruce would have money to give her, too, and there might even be enough for a few days of school lunches. We hadn't sat around a table and eaten as a family since Pop had lived with us, and I no longer missed it, but our mother did. That fall when I spent so much time at Connolly's Gym, she suggested we start having breakfasts again, sit-down breakfasts together, and for a few weeks she got up every weekday morning an hour earlier to pull that off.

I'd be in the attic, lying in my bed in the early morning darkness, my breath clouding in front of me. I'd hear the door open at the bottom of the dusty stairwell and my mother's cheerful voice calling me down. Eventually the five of us would be sitting at the dining room table we rarely used, the blue light of early morning seeping through the windows: Jeb with his wild hair and downy whiskers; Nicole in the brown sweater she wore to hide the brace she endured for her scoliosis; Suzanne in her hip-hugger jeans and a T-s.h.i.+rt, black eyeliner around both eyes like bruises. Mom would be dressed in a blouse and scarf, earrings and makeup, dressed for this job doing good in Boston when it had never paid her enough to do the good she wanted for us us. But it seemed she was forever too tired to look for something else. And what else could she do anyway? She was only qualified for social work. She could work two jobs like Rosie's mother, but then she'd never be home at all. Years later I would think about my father more, think about those three months off every year, his summer mornings writing and running, most every afternoon lying under the sun at the beach. But it seemed he'd chosen that job for those three months. He was as poor as we were, a condition he could endure for those ninety days it gave him back to write longer every morning than he did all year.

For a few weeks that fall, Mom served us steaming bowls of oatmeal or Cream of Wheat with cinnamon toast-bread she'd b.u.t.ter, then sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon and slide under the blue flames of the broiler; other mornings, it'd be buckwheat pancakes and hot bacon and orange juice. One morning we woke to eggs Benedict with hollandaise sauce and baked peaches in pools of melted b.u.t.ter and caramelized brown sugar.

But this didn't last. It couldn't. She ran out of money, and we were kids who went to bed late and didn't get up in the morning. Before Mom had started these breakfasts, she'd be on her way to work when we were supposed to leave the house to catch the bus around seven. Even with those wonderful smells filling the house once again, we rarely made it to the table on time, and our mother, depriving herself of a little extra sleep for this, gave up. It was like living inside a great slumbering beast who'd woken just long enough to blink its watery eyes, howl, then turn over and go back to sleep.

BUT THANKSGIVING was coming up, one of those days each year my mother always rallied for, when she seemed to shrug off the ma.s.sive weight that was raising children alone, and it was like watching a night-blooming flower open its petals in the gloom: for a while holidays changed everything; she'd clean the house, and with genuine good cheer coax us into getting off our a.s.ses to clean, too. She'd put some Rolling Stones on the stereo and turn it up loud and make decorations out of construction paper and glue and yarn and glitter, taping these brilliant colors around the house. At Thanksgiving, there'd be earth tones-browns and greens and yellows. At Christmas: red, silver, and gold. On our birthdays we'd wake to presents in the living room, each of them wrapped by her; sometimes the paper would be homemade, a grocery bag she'd stenciled stars onto, then dressed with twine and a rope bow. There'd be store-bought paper, too, cut and taped perfectly around our new clothes, records, or books, these boxes laid out and stacked so that there always appeared to be more than there were. She probably spent the rent money on all this, and she put presents on layaway accounts she'd spend an entire year paying down.

For this Thanksgiving, Mom had stuffed turkey with cornbread dressing. There was baked squash and Yorks.h.i.+re pudding. There was homemade cranberry relish, steaming dirty rice and mashed potatoes and rolls made from scratch. She'd decorated the house and used an ironed sheet as a linen tablecloth. She'd been playing old jazz alb.u.ms on the stereo, the same music she and Pop would listen to years earlier-Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, and Buddy Rich.

Outside it was cold enough to snow, the sky gray, the front yard hard and brown. Bruce was south of Boston with his family, and Mom had put on makeup and a light sweater. She wore earrings and a bracelet like she did to work. Pop was due at three, and we'd be eating at four, and Mom worked in the kitchen, a Pall Mall smoking in an ashtray, sipping from a gla.s.s of Gallo red wine while she stirred gravy on the stove, Brubeck's West Coast piano filling the house.

It was holidays when the six of us sat down as a family again, and whenever we did, Pop sitting at the head of the table like he used to, it was as if we were each inhabiting roles to play for this brief time: Jeb was the reclusive genius; Nicole was the studious one getting good grades; Suzanne was the one just barely getting by but would; I was the newly disciplined athlete; Mom was the hardworking woman who managed to work, shop, do the bills and laundry, and cook for us too, especially on holidays like this; and Pop was the man who gave us most of whatever money he made and would sit at the head of the table like it was a throne he'd somehow left behind and was glad to reclaim two to three times a year.

Maybe we could all feel the charade, that Jeb spent way too much time in his room with his teacher, that he'd tried to kill himself once and why wouldn't he again?, that Nicole had become distant and brooding and terribly alone, that Suzanne would fall in love with one avenue boy after another, that her dealing money often bought us food we wouldn't have had otherwise, that I was methodically teaching myself how to hurt people, that Mom was was hardworking but could never keep up with the bills, the laundry, the shopping, with feeding us, with much of any of what Pop had left her behind to do on her own, that Pop was no longer the head of the family, though he still sat at the head of the table as if he belonged there. hardworking but could never keep up with the bills, the laundry, the shopping, with feeding us, with much of any of what Pop had left her behind to do on her own, that Pop was no longer the head of the family, though he still sat at the head of the table as if he belonged there.

But I still looked forward to these dinners, to Mom's wonderful cooking, to her flirting with Pop and he flirting with her. He'd look her up and down and tell her how beautiful she still was, that n.o.body could cook like her. She'd say, "Oh, be quiet, Andre," and she'd reach for a spoon or knife or loaded dish, but she'd be smiling, her cheeks flushed. I looked forward to all four of us kids leaving our separate bedrooms to sit at a candlelit table and see each other over all this abundance, and for a little while we'd forget that Mom had to skip paying some bills to do this, we'd forget that this was all just temporary and everyone was an actor in a play none of us had written.

It was three-thirty and Pop wasn't here yet. Suzanne had come down from her room, Nicole too. Jeb was still up in his practicing guitar to his metronome, and Mom had me pull the turkey from the oven and set it on the counter. It was copper brown. I could smell its warm meat, the onions and cornmeal of the stuffing. Mom covered it loosely with foil and kept glancing at the clock. Pop should have been here a half hour already, sipping something in the kitchen with her like they used to. At four o'clock, she called his number and got no answer. At four-thirty, she pulled the foil off the turkey and began to carve it with a steak knife. She had me and Suzanne carry the side dishes out to the table and set them on the ironed sheet.

"Well, G.o.dd.a.m.nit," she said, "we're just going to have to start without him."

But we didn't. To start without him would be to start the play without the audience. We couldn't. We waited.

Mom tossed her wine into the sink and began was.h.i.+ng dishes. I don't remember helping her, but I hope I did. Nicole and Suzanne ate some rolls, cool now.

Sometime between six or seven, a car pulled up to the curb. Its headlights stayed on a while, and when they finally turned off I could see from the front room that it was Pop's old Lancer. Then both doors opened. At first I thought he'd brought a girlfriend with him, but in the light from the porch I could see it was a man in an overcoat. He held a bag to his chest, and he turned and waited for Pop to walk around the hood of the car, both of them moving unsteadily up the sidewalk to the porch.

The house had been quiet for a while. I stayed in the front room long enough to lower the needle back down onto the Brubeck alb.u.m, then I met them at the door. The front hallway was dark, the bulb in the ceiling fixture blown long before, and both men were shadows walking into the house smelling like booze. My father put his arm around my shoulders, and he said, "Lou, Louie, this is my boy. This is Andre."

The man said something, and I shook his hand and he pushed the bag at me, two bottles of wine I carried past the loaded dining table, half the candles still burning, out to the kitchen where Mom leaned against the counter smoking a Pall Mall, drawing deeply on it, her eyes wary.

"Pop's here. He brought a friend."

"What?"

But then Pop was behind me, his buddy too, and her face produced a smile, her eyes still wary, and Pop said, "Pat, this is Lou. Lou, Pat. He's sharing Thanksgiving with us."

Lou was taller than Pop, but his cheeks were jaundiced and under his eyes hung gray bags above a withered mustache. He moved swiftly to my mother, nearly stumbling, and he took her hand in both of his, apologized for the intrusion, said he'd brought some wine. Pop leaned close to me and whispered thickly, "He's dying, son. And, his wife just kicked him out."

I nodded. Pop took the bag from me and pulled out the bottles and soon we were all sitting in candlelight at the table, Pop at the head, me to his right, then Lou to mine. Mom sat at the opposite end, my brother and sisters across from me. The Brubeck was playing a little too loudly, the piano rhythm too fast for eating, but we'd been waiting and were hungry and we pa.s.sed each other plates to fill with whatever dish was in front of us, and though a lot of the food had cooled the smells were still in the room-the celery and liver in the dirty rice, the sweet squash, the savory turkey meat and salt-drippings gravy. We all seemed to be talking at once, and Lou was drunker than I'd thought. He had a hard time holding up his plate and he kept mumbling how pretty we were, how pretty all of Andre's daughters were.

I'd seen him before, too. I'd seen him in church, and I'd seen him standing in the doorway of the framing shop he owned in Bradford Square. Pop had probably met him at Ronnie D's bar, the place he went to drink after all his work was done. And even this drunk and sick, it was clear how much he respected Pop. He kept glancing over at him with reverence and affection and grat.i.tude. It's how so many people treated our father, as if he was not like other men, as if there was something about him that made them somehow more themselves when they were around him.

Part of it seemed to be the stories he wrote; people put him in a higher place after having read them. But Pop had always been deeply curious about people too, from the man pumping gas into his car, to a waitress serving us on a Sunday, to the priest standing at the church door in his robes, Pop always lingered and asked people questions about their work, their days and nights, questions n.o.body else ever seemed to ask.

This drew people to him, people like this dying man Lou, whose hand was now on my knee under the table.

"Yurall sech pretty girlz. So pretty."

My face was hot iron. Pop was talking loudly over the jazz about the cornbread stuffing, how it was one of the only things he missed about Louisiana. Suzanne was talking, too, her lips moving and her eyes pointed at Pop. Mom was laughing, and Nicole was chewing, Jeb too, and now Lou's hand moved farther up my leg and I turned to him to tell him I'm no girl, and his lips pressed against mine, his whiskers poking my skin, his tongue pus.h.i.+ng into my mouth. It was like getting stabbed. I jerked back, Pop's voice louder than ever now, "Uh-oh, uh-oh," he said. And I was up and moving past my mother out the back door to the porch, the air a cold slap I wanted more of. I spit over the railing. I wiped my mouth and spit again.

Pretty girls. How could he think, even s.h.i.+t-faced, that I was a How could he think, even s.h.i.+t-faced, that I was a girl girl? My hair was cut to my shoulders now, still long but not even long enough to tie back, and I had changed changed. I had a chest and shoulders. I had a flaring upper back. I had learned how to throw punches. How could he even think think that? And in front of everyone, too. In front of my that? And in front of everyone, too. In front of my father, father, who was now out on the porch with me, nearly yelling, "Andre, he doesn't want to suck your who was now out on the porch with me, nearly yelling, "Andre, he doesn't want to suck your c.o.c.k c.o.c.k. Lou doesn't want your c.o.c.k, son, he wants your health health." Pop slapped my chest with the back of his hand. "He wants your youth and your muscles and all those years ahead of you. He's dying, son, he's f.u.c.king dying. dying. He's got f.u.c.king leukemia and his wife kicked him out on Thanksgiving He's got f.u.c.king leukemia and his wife kicked him out on Thanksgiving Day Day. You hear hear me?" me?"

My father was clearly as drunk as his friend, and he kept slapping my chest, and I was crying for the first time in years, my father's reddened face, his trimmed beard and thinning brown hair getting all blurry. Did he think I was building muscles for my health health? And now he wanted me to go back in and sit down next to his friend.

I wiped my eyes and followed my father back inside. There was candlelight and Brubeck's piano, there were the smells of hot wax and this holiday feast, but the table wasn't as loud and raucous as it had been earlier, and Lou was staring at his plate and seemed to be carrying on a conversation with himself. I sat down beside him. I did not look at my family. I lifted my fork, and I would use it if I had to, I would; I'd stick it into his dying face, for it was clear once again that n.o.body in this world was going to take care of you but you you.

SUZANNE AND I discovered something called accelerated admission, where you could skip your senior year and go straight to college. I didn't want to leave my friends, but the thought of leaving the high school was cool mountain water after a long, hot run, and I took a test and somehow got into Bradford College. Suzanne was already a student there. She'd stopped wearing hip-huggers and heavy black eyeliner. She spent most of her nights studying in her room, and she began to make friends over there with the kids of doctors and bankers, and sometimes she'd spend the night in one of their dorm rooms. Because our father was a professor she just had to pay for her books, one more thing our mother had to worry about.

Bradford College was a small green campus behind stone walls and iron fences, and it held over three hundred students from around the country and the world, many of them rich. The men were only a year or two older than I was, but they drove BMWs and sports cars with names I'd never heard of. They wore khaki pants and b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rts and spoke ironically in cla.s.ses. "Yes, Professor, but does Aristotle speak to dramaturgy in that way? It seems to me he does not."

"Yes, but how?"

"You see, Professor, that's the question, isn't it?"

There would be some appreciative laughter, a few sardonic smiles, the professor moving on to someone else.

For nearly two hundred years Bradford had been a women's college, and now it had just begun to admit men and there were far more women, roughly ten to one. So many of them were tall and slim. They had long straight hair and straight teeth and straight postures from what I imagined were childhoods spent riding horses and swimming and playing tennis. They drove convertible coupes and laughed often. Very few of them wore bras and on cool mornings I could see their nipples under their sweaters and turtlenecks. I tried not to look, but I couldn't not look. The first week of the first semester, I was sixteen. I walked around campus in a leather jacket, my hair shorter now, books under my arm I was actually reading, but around these women, who were eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, I felt like a poor and uncultured boy.

One morning between cla.s.ses I cut through the student union building, its pool table and soft chairs, its serving counter where you could order a cheeseburger and coffee or hot chocolate. A group of them were over by the picture window which looked out onto the raked lawn. I heard one of them say, "That's Dubus's son. Look at him. He's such a townie townie."

I'd heard the word before. They used it for the men they'd see at Ronnie D's bar down in Bradford Square, the place where my father drank with students and his friends. It's where some men from the town drank, too-plumbers and electricians and millworkers, Sheetrock hangers and housepainters and off-duty cops: townies.

I enjoyed reading the books-even the biology and economics-and usually I enjoyed the cla.s.s discussions and tried to be prepared for them, but I was surrounded by people who seemed reared from comfort, most of whom knew where they were headed, too: law school, medical school, business school, a few even to New York City where they would sing, dance, and act. In the smoke room in Academy Hall, a place I walked by often, I'd hear of their aims for the future, and I didn't have any. All I wanted to do was bench-press 300 pounds and get so big I scared people, bad people, people who could hurt you.

The following May, instead of going to my sociology final, I shot pool in the student union with Sa'eed, a soft-spoken black kid who'd grown up in the slums of Philadelphia where people shot each other regularly. I'd just set up for the break when my sociology professor walked in for a c.o.ke before cla.s.s. He was heavyset with a beard and gla.s.ses, and I liked him. From the counter he smiled over at me. "That's a good way to prepare for a final. Keeps you relaxed."

I smiled back. "Yep. I'll be right there."

But I didn't go and got an F in the course. The next fall I didn't go back. I told my mother I was just taking a year off, but I didn't know if that was true. I couldn't imagine going back to that tiny campus that felt so foreign to me, so protected.

LAMSON'S SPA was on Winter Street, a convenience store with cardboard in the windows, some of them cracked, duct tape holding them together. Inside, the shelves were largely empty and half the ceiling lights were out and everybody knew the place was a front for bookies and drug dealers. South of it was a sub shop and American Ace Hardware, the Greek church on one side, a Catholic church on the other, and farther down the hill were Mediterranean Pizza and Dunkin' Donuts, their fluorescent light spilling out the windows onto the parking lot next to the gas station where five days a week I worked from seven to four pumping gasoline into the trucks and vans of tradesmen. I'd take their cash and go into the tiny gla.s.s booth and make change. I'd hand it to them, then slide the booth door shut to keep out the cold. There was an electric s.p.a.ce heater under the plywood shelf the register sat on, and it was like the one we had back in the tree hut, the one we kept going with extension cords we'd snuck into our bas.e.m.e.nt, our mother always confused as to why the electric bill had gone up so much, and now, as I worked forty hours a week and knew how much of my day and week and life I had to put into just making money, I felt badly about that bill, about stealing from my hardworking mother like that.

The man who hired me was older than my father and drove a late-model Cadillac Seville. He had dark skin and wore polyester pants, s.h.i.+ning shoes, an overcoat, and sweet-smelling cologne. Every afternoon at exactly four o'clock he'd drive up to the pumps to lock up and take my deposit bag and credit card receipts. When he first hired me, he looked me over and said, "This place gets robbed sometimes. If they got a gun, don't try nothin'. But, there's this, too." On the booth's metal windowsill was a homemade club. He picked it up and held it out to me. It was some kind of hardwood, about three feet long, the length of it covered with carved initials and ink markings. Late into my first day, tired of looking straight out the window at the brick machine shop there, or to my left at the black iron trestle above Winter Street, or to my right at the repossessed cars in the lot, I picked up the club and began to read who loved whom 4-ever, who sucked, what number to call for great head, then, in black ink, the letters neat and perfectly aligned, Life is like a d.i.c.k. If it's hard, you get f.u.c.ked. If it's soft, you can't beat it Life is like a d.i.c.k. If it's hard, you get f.u.c.ked. If it's soft, you can't beat it.

Just before Connolly's closed down, Ray Duffy walked up to me and asked if I wanted to buy two 50-pound plates. They were spray-painted silver and fit right onto my barbell at home and that's where Sam and I worked out together now three days a week, Sam back on the weights, his hockey career doubtful. He was so much stronger than I was, and during the bench press we had to strip 80 to 100 pounds off the bar for my sets. Still, I could push close to 250 pounds off my chest, and in the shoulder and back movements, I was almost as strong as Sam. On off days, we drove to Kenoza Lake where you could drive to the top of Kenoza Hill along a winding gravel road, but there was also a steep dirt trail through the trees. It was sixty yards long and nearly 45 degrees, and Sam and I would take turns grabbing 20-pound dumbbells and running up that trail as hard as we could. Just before the top, an invisible hand yanking the air from your lungs and the earth itself trying to pull you down, we'd reach the crest of the hill where there was an incline of open gra.s.s and we'd run on for another thirty yards. We worked up to doing this ten times each.

I'd hung a heavy bag down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, too, and every day after a workout I'd wrap my hands and pull on hitting gloves and hit the bag as hard as I could. The Everlast logo was the height of a man's face, and I'd jab it, then throw a straight right to the nose, a double left hook to the ribs and temple, a right hook to the chin followed by a right cross to the forehead, that last punch rising up from my back foot and pivoting hip, the bag jerking on its chain. So many times the Everlast was Tommy J.'s face, his shaved head and small MP mustache. Other times it'd be the kid who threw the Molotov c.o.c.ktail into my mother's car, or Dennis Murphy right after he slapped the pine into that old woman's face, or Clay Whelan just before he started pus.h.i.+ng me to the ground to whale on my face and head, or Doucette stabbing Jimmy Quinn, or any of the boys and men from the avenues lounging around in our rented house, smoking and drinking and listening to the stereo Bruce bought us, calling Suzanne "Sue" and me a little p.u.s.s.y and Jeb a f.a.ggot. And lately, I saw myself punching Suzanne's new boyfriend, Adam Kench.

It was after ten o'clock on a weeknight and she was driving Mom's Toyota back home from Bradford. He was. .h.i.tchhiking on Main Street in a leather jacket and faded jeans, his hair past his shoulders, sungla.s.ses on at night. She said he'd looked like Neil Young so she stopped and picked him up, but he was wearing sungla.s.ses because the glare of the headlights was too bright for a quaalude-head, a nurse's aide who was in that line of work to steal drugs from hospitals and rehab.

He was high all the time, and she was with him for months. When they were at the house, they'd be up in her room, the door closed, Grand Funk Railroad playing, Pink Floyd, Robin Trower, the Stones. Up close you could see how sunken his chest was, how his long hair was thinning, and the skin of his face was more gray than pink, the stubble of his chin like some leveled ruin. I rarely saw his eyes because he never took off his dark sungla.s.ses, and he was always asking Suzanne for a ride: To the hospital where he worked. To the Packy for some wine. To some low-rent neighborhood to cop some downs.

The night it happened I woke to the sound of arguing. A woman's voice, then a man's, Mom and Pop married again and I was nine, lying in my bed next to Jeb in that camp in the woods. But the voices were outside and three stories below, Suzanne and Kench. I was lying under covers in my attic bedroom. I heard the doors of Mom's Toyota open and shut, Suzanne's voice as the engine turned over and the gear s.h.i.+fted, the whine of the small motor as they backed out of the driveway. I had an electric clock now, and I sat up and squinted at its glowing numbers: 10:37. Where were they going this late? And why? Something felt wrong about it.

I lay awake a long time. I had no curtains in the windows, and I could see it was snowing outside, a slight wind blowing the flakes under the streetlamp. So many falling and falling, and I got tired of seeing the falling and closed my eyes.

IT WAS Suzanne who woke Mom the next morning. She called just after dawn broke. Thirty years later she told me why she waited this long but no longer, because she didn't want Mom to be awake already, getting ready for work on a Monday morning only to see her driveway empty, her car gone, her oldest daughter still out from the night before, then get angry and be p.i.s.sed off when the phone rang and start yelling before Suzanne could talk, because she knew Mom would feel guilty for that later, she'd feel guilty about yelling at her daughter on this Monday morning in February, so Suzanne called her early enough to wake her and spare her that feeling later. Save her from at least that.

She and Kench had driven forty miles to Boston for a drink. After last call, he got in behind the wheel and got them lost. They were somewhere in Dorchester or Roxbury on Blue Hill Avenue. There were row houses and broken streetlights, a few cars abandoned on the sidewalk. This was 1977, the forced busing riots still in the news, white men and women stepping in front of buses of black kids driving into their school yards, yelling, "n.i.g.g.e.rs, go home!" The previous summer, the bicentennial summer, there was a first-page photo of a white man trying to impale a black man with a pole, the American flag hanging off it, the black man a lawyer in a three-piece suit, trying to twist away from it. At the high school for a year now, there'd been talk of a race riot, of "n.i.g.g.e.rs" and "spics" coming up from Lawrence and Lowell to cause trouble, so get ready, bring a blade, stick together, kick some a.s.s.

Kench turned down a dead-end street. It was after two in the morning. He stopped the Toyota to turn around, and a beat-up sedan pa.s.sed them slowly on the opposite side. Then it did a U-turn and pulled across the road and blocked it, their front b.u.mper not far from the Toyota's exhaust pipe. Two men stepped out. They were both black and one of them knocked on the window and asked Kench for help because their car had just gotten stuck on the ice behind them.