Townie_ A Memoir Part 8

Kench got out of the car and left Suzanne there and walked around to the rear of the sedan. One of the men got behind the sedan's wheel, the other stayed back with Kench, and they both pushed on the trunk as the big engine roared. Suzanne could hear it from inside Mom's Toyota, but she could also see the red flash of the brake lights every time her boyfriend and the other man pushed. The sedan didn't move and Kench climbed back into the Toyota and shut the door against the cold.

"Adam," she said, "he was stepping on the brakes when you guys were pus.h.i.+ng."

"Don't worry, I got it covered. We're copasetic."

"No, we need to leave."

One of the men rapped his knuckles against the driver's window and Kench opened the door and stepped outside again and Suzanne heard the sap thump his forehead, watched him drop to the street. The one who hit him knelt over him and went through his pockets, and Suzanne's pa.s.senger door opened and the other one pulled her from the car and held a knife to her ribs and walked her to the sedan.

WHEN THEY were done with her, when they were done taking turns with her one at a time in the backseat while the other drove slowly past the steel-shuttered windows of shops, under overpa.s.ses, past the locked doors of apartment buildings-when they were done, they stopped at a corner and pushed her out. She wore only her s.h.i.+rt, nothing else, and as they drove off she stood there with her feet together, her arms crossed tightly. It was after three in the morning in February in Boston, ice on the sidewalk, the s...o...b..nks along the curb dirty and frozen, her feet bare, her legs. Both of the men had held the same knife to her the whole time, and that was how she was going to die, wasn't it? But no, the cold will do it now. Maybe she was thinking that when she saw the headlights coming and she waved the car down, a taxicab, the driver older and black, looking her over, letting her climb into the back of his heated cab. She told him what had just happened to her, and he shook his head, "All that free s.h.i.+t thrown at them and they gotta do that."

He used his radio to call the police. She described to him the dead-end alley she'd been taken from, the streets and buildings around it. The driver took her right to it. In the glare of his headlights, Mom's red Toyota was still there, and Kench lay on his back in the low s...o...b..nk where he'd fallen. Over the rooftops, the sky wasn't quite as black, dawn not far off, a Monday in February, Valentine's Day.

NOW IT was just after seven, Mom and Bruce were in his car speeding down the highway for Boston, and I was picking up the phone to call my father.

At first, because I never called it, I couldn't remember his number. Then it came to me and I dialed, my fingers hot in the rotary holes, my body light, my tongue thick. His phone began to ring. I stood in the hallway near the back door, the one Suzanne had used the night before to leave. I heard again their voices, heard the car start up, and why didn't I get up and run down there and stop them? I knew then, wherever they were going, she was doing it for him. I should've done something. Again, why didn't I?

Outside the sky was gray. Patches of snow lay in our neighbor's side yard. Somewhere in our house Jeb and Nicole were awake, home because of what had happened, though I did not know where they were or what they were doing.

"h.e.l.lo?" He sounded as if he'd been up for a long while.

"Pop?"

"Andre?"

"Yeah. I have bad news." It felt as if I were telling him to lift his chin and hold still so I could plant my feet and raise my fists.

"What? What is it?"

And throw this right cross into his nose and mouth and trimmed beard. "Suzanne got raped last night."

"What?"

"In Boston. Mom and Bruce are going to get her right now."

My father said more things, his voice shot through with shock and pain. He said he'd be right over, and as I hung up, my face began to feel on fire for what I felt right then, shame that I had not protected his daughter, my sister, but there was something else too, something I needed to deny but could not, this dark joy spreading through my chest at having just done that to him, the one who should've been here all along, the one who should never have left us in the first place.

ON THE heavy bag now, I punched it so hard my knuckles stung and my shoulders ached. I kept seeing the men who'd done that to Suzanne; I kept seeing them as as they were doing it. Then I'd change what happened. I'd stand in the middle of the street till the cruising sedan had to stop and I'd walk around to the driver's side and set my feet and punch him in the temple, ripping a light through his brain that would forever stop his heart. I'd jerk open the back door and pry the knife from the one on my sister, then hook my forearm around his forehead and pull the blade into his throat and draw it from ear to ear, and I'd punch the bag and punch it and punch it till I couldn't breathe anymore and my heart was charging faster than the sedan of the two men who got away and were never found, not then, not now, gone for good. they were doing it. Then I'd change what happened. I'd stand in the middle of the street till the cruising sedan had to stop and I'd walk around to the driver's side and set my feet and punch him in the temple, ripping a light through his brain that would forever stop his heart. I'd jerk open the back door and pry the knife from the one on my sister, then hook my forearm around his forehead and pull the blade into his throat and draw it from ear to ear, and I'd punch the bag and punch it and punch it till I couldn't breathe anymore and my heart was charging faster than the sedan of the two men who got away and were never found, not then, not now, gone for good.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON STREET lay behind concrete floodwalls and ran parallel to the Merrimack River from Railroad Square all the way to the Basilere Bridge. In the winter of 1977, it was a street of closed shops, some of their display windows covered with brown paper, squares of masking tape sticking to the gla.s.s. Other businesses had nothing covering their front windows, and beyond them lay one big dusty room. Against the wall would be shelves and a bare countertop holding a bra.s.s cash register, its drawer open and empty. The old Woolworth's building was closed up and locked, but farther down the street was Mitch.e.l.l's which was still operating and where, when she could, Mom would put clothes on layaway for us. Farther west was Barrett's. Through the windows I'd see men in s.h.i.+rts and ties selling clothes to men who wore ties, too. I rarely saw men like that and a.s.sumed they must live across the river in Bradford.

And Was.h.i.+ngton Street was where the bars were: the Lido, the Tap, the Chit Chat Lounge. They were on the street level of the mill buildings, darkened, nearly windowless caves filled with men and women drinking and smoking, their cigarette smoke swirling through the dim lights behind the bar. There'd be music playing on the jukebox: Frank Sinatra and Sonny and Cher, Elton John, Tom Jones, and Johnny Paycheck. Near the register were jars of pickled eggs, a rack of potato chips and Slim Jims, wooden booths built into the walls, a few scattered c.o.c.ktail tables, most of their bubbled Formica tops spotted with cigarette burns. Throughout downtown, along the narrow streets and alleys between the mills, there were many other bars like this: Ray and Arlene's, Smitty's, the 104 Club. There were stories of knifings or shootings in these places, of brawls with guys getting their teeth knocked out, their noses broken, their jaws splintered and having to be wired shut. The same names kept coming up, too-the Murphy boys, the Finns, the Duffys, Jon and Jake Cadell, the Wallaces, gangs of brothers who drank together down on Was.h.i.+ngton Street, then got into fights, sometimes with each other. And there were men known for just that one thing-brawling and almost always coming out on top: Jackie Wright, Paul Brooks, Ray Duffy, Bobby Twist, and Daryl Woods. Others, too. They'd work all week for the city repairing roads, or over at Western Electric in Andover a.s.sembling circuit boards, or on a construction crew, or in one of the quarter-running mills downtown stamping shoe soles. Then on Friday and Sat.u.r.day nights they'd fold their drinking money into the front pocket of their jeans, pull on their leather jacket, and hit Was.h.i.+ngton Street.

IT WAS a Sat.u.r.day night in winter, and we were heading downtown in Sam's black Duster, me and Sam and my brother Jeb. For the past three years, he'd barely left his room. He was tall and lean, and his hair was so wild he had to stick strands of it behind his ears so he could see. He'd go five or six days without shaving, his cheeks and chin covered with soft brown whiskers.

He was seventeen now and a junior at the high school. When he actually went there, he wore a denim vest and spent most of the day in the art department, drawing and painting and sculpting. One afternoon he found a dead cat in the snow off Columbia Park, and he carried it into the house and cut off its tail with a kitchen knife. The next day he wore the cat tail as a tie, the bottom half of it tucked neatly into his vest.

He practiced cla.s.sical guitar hours and hours every day up in his closed bedroom. His former teacher from the middle school would be in there with him, and soon my brother's guitar would go silent and she'd start moaning. After a while, Jeb's guitar would start up again. I would hear this sometimes and think only good things, that my brother was getting regularly what most boys could only dream of, that she was keeping him so busy with s.e.x and art that he couldn't possibly want to die anymore. She still bought him guitar strings, music books, paints, canvases, but he never went out with me on the weekends, never roamed the streets anymore like we used to. On Sat.u.r.day nights, she'd come for him in her Z-28, and he'd walk out of the house for trips to restaurants down in Cambridge and Boston.

It was a cold night in February, two feet of snow on the ground, a thin layer of cracked ice on the sidewalks. Somehow I'd talked Jeb into going out with us, and it was strange having him in the backseat behind me, but it felt good. Like it used to. Just the two of us, before there were any friends like Cleary who was at the trade school now and had stopped coming around. We didn't see much of him at all, though we started to hear about his little brother Mike, who was making a name for himself as a martial artist, a polite and gentlemanly killer.

That night Sam and I were wearing sweaters and leather jackets, jeans and boots, but Jeb never seemed to get cold. He wore a T-s.h.i.+rt and loose corduroys. On his feet weren't shoes but wool slippers his teacher had knitted for him. He needed a shave.

Sam had the radio on, Rod Stewart singing about Maggie kicking him in the head. We were heading down to the Tap on Was.h.i.+ngton Street. On Sat.u.r.day nights they had live music, and the place would be full of men and women, some of them from Bradford College across the river. Sam drove under the railroad bridge into Lafayette Square. We pa.s.sed the bright lighted windows of Store 24 and cut around the rotary into the dark streets of downtown, tall abandoned mill buildings on both sides of us as present yet gone as dead ancestors. Every block and a half there'd be a blue or red neon glow coming from the first-floor window, another bar this town was full of, and I was looking forward to the Tap, but not to drink. Sam and I were eighteen now and legally old enough to be in these barrooms, but for months now he and I hadn't had even one sip of beer, and we weren't eating anything with sugar in it either. We were trying to get as defined as possible, to get cut.

Sam drove the Duster down the alleyway and into the asphalt lot below. It was crowded with cars and pickups. There were streetlamps along the floodwall s.h.i.+ning down on the plowed banks, the lot salted and sanded, and out on the river was the slow dim movement of white floes on black water. Even before I stepped out of Sam's car I could hear the thumping ba.s.s of the band up in the Tap, could hear all the bar voices talking over it.

Jeb climbed out of the back. His hair was in his face. There were brown whiskers across his cheeks and chin and throat, and as we crossed the lot for the rear door of the bar, Jeb just a few steps behind us in his T-s.h.i.+rt and hand-knit woolen slippers, I felt I'd done him some kind of wrong by bringing him, that I was using him somehow, my little brother who'd become a kept boy, a musical recluse.

The stairwell up to the street level was dimly lit, the wooden treads wet and gritty. The music was louder here, and I heard a woman laugh over the noise. At the landing, Sam pushed open the door, the long oak bar two and three people deep, the bartenders working fast and never stopping, the band too loud, the air stuffy and smelling like damp wool and cigarette smoke, perfume and spilled beer and sweat. The bouncer sat on a stool collecting a two-dollar cover charge. Even on the stool he was taller than we were. He had curly black hair and a wool sweater and looked thirty years old.

We paid our money and made our way through the crowd. The floor was wide hardwood planks worn smooth, and the band was in the next room where the lights were dimmed and men and women sat at c.o.c.ktail tables drinking and talking and laughing. A lot of them looked older than we were, married couples out for their Sat.u.r.day night. The band was on a small stage, a cigarette smoke haze under the lights where the lead guitarist was singing about Amy and how he'd like to spend the night with her.

Usually Sam and I would head to the bar and order a milk, wait for the bartender to say something before he poured us the watered-down liquid they used for White Russians, but the bar was just too hard to get to, and as we stood there in the squeeze of bodies I began to recognize a face here and there, some of them girls from the high school, young women now. A lot of them worked s.h.i.+fts at Western Electric or in one of the mills or restaurants downtown, or maybe they were training as a nurse's aide in an old folks' home or had tried a little college like me before dropping out.

I could see a few of them drinking at the bar, talking to each other over the music. They took deep drags off their cigarettes and turned their heads to exhale, their made-up eyes glittering darkly.

Everybody was talking and n.o.body was even pretending to listen to the band. I was already tired of standing in the middle of it all and hoped Sam felt the same way and would want to leave soon. But he was talking to Bobby Schwartz, who I hadn't seen come in. Bobby looked big and handsome in his dress leather jacket and somehow he'd made it to the bar and had a drink in his hand. He was smiling at Sam, nodding at whatever he was saying, and something was happening up against the brick wall, Jeb slapping away the hand of Steve Lynch.

Lynch was over six feet and had curly blond hair and a deep voice and the girls liked him though he was known for being a bada.s.s, for walking the halls like some charismatic king, always three or four others trailing behind him. More than once I'd seen him push a smaller kid out of the way, or knock another's books out of his hands as he pa.s.sed, and he'd laugh and call them f.a.ggots. I'd been in the same cla.s.s with his older brother Dana, who wasn't much different, just a little bigger and not quite as handsome.

Lynch was here with three or four of his buddies. Now they were standing there waiting for him to do something to this little s.h.i.+t with the untamed hair and slippers on his feet who'd just slapped Lynch's hand aside after Steve'd scratched Jeb's chin and said, "You need a f.u.c.kin' shave."

Bobby and Sam saw what was happening, too; the three of us stepped closer as if we'd been pulled there, the four with Lynch looking us over, us doing the same to them. I was vaguely aware of a steady electric current rising up my legs and into my chest, and I wasn't afraid, just so aware, Lynch's voice somehow the only one I heard above the dozens of others, n.o.body looking over at us, the crowd still drinking and talking and laughing, Steve's voice, Let's take it outside then. Let's take it outside then.

You first.

No, you.

And Jeb stepped sideways through the crowd, Lynch following him past the bouncer through the door for the long stairwell down to the parking lot where my brother would have to fight in his slippers and T-s.h.i.+rt, his hair swinging in front of his face, and I wanted to follow, but Bobby was holding his hand up to Lynch's boys, smiling that same smile he used to have in Connolly's ring, both gloves at his side, daring you to swing, "You stay, we stay, right, boys?"

The tallest and biggest nodded, and the seven of us stood there in the smoke haze and the noise of the crowd that didn't know we were waiting to see who'd come back in that door.

It was Lynch and it was way too soon. Less than a minute. He was smiling, looking down at me as he rejoined his friends. Sam said something, or Bobby, but I was moving through the crowd past the bouncer, then down the long stairwell, thinking knife. knife. He He stabbed stabbed him. him.

The steps were pockets of air under my feet. Then I was out in the cold, the grit of salt and sand on ice under my boots, Jeb standing there looking at me.

"You all right?"

"I had my back to him, he kicked me down the stairs, I can't find my other slipper."

Jeb's left foot was bare, his toes naked on the iced-over asphalt.

"Where is it?"

"Up there somewhere."

I was back inside, the stairs under me like an afterthought. And I was scanning them for my brother's wool slipper, but I wasn't looking for it. Then I was on the landing and past the bouncer inside the noise and heat and smoke, walking past Lynch and his boys to Sam and Bobby. He kicked him down the stairs. Help me find his slipper. He kicked him down the stairs. Help me find his slipper.

Sam went first and then I did too, but there was the feeling I was done with this, done with looking, done with everything, and I ran back up, stepped inside the bar, turned, and there he was, Steve Lynch on the landing, grinning down at me. My back was to the open door of the bar, and as the words came out of my mouth I could feel my weight sink back on my right foot, my arms go loose at my sides, and it was as if I were in a warm bath under a blue sky, my words coming together in a question that could only get the answer I was waiting for. "Have you seen my brother's slipper, Steve?"

"Slipper? Your brother's a f.u.c.kin' f.a.ggot and so are-" Your brother's a f.u.c.kin' f.a.ggot and so are-"

He was falling, not backwards, but straight down, as if a blade had taken off his legs at the knees, and I was swinging and swinging but the bouncer's arm was in the air between us and I was trying to punch over it, my fist just missing Lynch's face which was bone-white, his lower face wet and red, his mouth a dark hole though my fist felt nothing, and the bouncer pushed and I was half falling, half running down the stairs and out into the cold air where my brother waited.

"You find it?"

I was breathing hard. I shook my head. "No, but I clocked him."

"Good."

"Yeah." And we began walking through the dim parking lot for Sam's Duster, the air strangely still and calm, the streetlamps s.h.i.+ning down in the parked cars, the ice floes in the river beyond barely moving. I felt light and pure and free of something. Sam's car was locked.

"Your foot cold?"

"A little."

Something was different. Everything was different. There was more quiet in the air and more noise, too. The band had stopped playing upstairs and all the voices seemed to come louder through the brick walls. The back door pushed open from the stairwell and three of Lynch's boys came walking toward us. The bigger one, the tallest one, said, "You sucker-punched my friend," and he tackled me into a s...o...b..nk, then was sitting on my chest punching me in the side of the head, in the ears, in the neck and shoulder. Then it was over. He'd done his duty, and he was walking back to his buddies, the three of them standing next to Jeb like they were in front of a fire watching it burn. The big one and his buddies walked back inside, and I was standing, dusting the snow off. That was it it? My entire boyhood I'd been unable to talk or move or resist out of fear of that that? My head and ears were sore, so what.

I wanted to run back up there and try again. I wanted to set my feet and throw one into the big one's face, but now couples were leaving, a few of the women lighting up, their pocketbooks swinging. Engines started to turn over and Leslie, a woman I knew from the college, another townie, was walking fast to her car. I could see her breath. "Andre, they're coming for you. Like fifteen of them. I like your face just the way it is, honey. Please, you gotta get outta here."

There was yelling inside. A door slammed out front on the street. Jeb and I looked at each other, and then we were running down the back alley along the floodwall, over iced cobblestones past dumpsters and concrete loading docks and stacked oak pallets, then up under the railroad trestle past the traffic lights onto the sidewalk of Comeau Bridge. Jeb was ahead of me, his hair bouncing, his bare arms pumping. His other slipper was loose, the sole of his foot pale in the flickering fluorescent light of the streetlamps on the bridge. A car pa.s.sed us, its tires humming on the iron grid, then another, and I was waiting for the screech of brakes, for a carload of men to come get us and throw us over.

Soon we were in the bright light of the gas station on the other side, a stoner I knew from somewhere just hanging up the gas pump. His Camaro door was open, and the backseat was covered with eight-tracks and empty Marlboro cartons, Aerosmith blasting from his speakers as he drove me and my brother home.

He offered us. .h.i.ts off a joint, but we said no thanks. He pulled up to our house on Columbia Park, his stereo too loud, and we thanked him and heard his tires squeal on the ice behind us. Jeb went ahead of me up the path in the snow to our steps, his foot probably half frozen now. Like always, nearly every light in our house seemed to be on, each window lit up and uncovered, and I walked into it behind my brother and shut the door. They're coming for you. They're coming for you. I believed that, and my first thought was to turn off the lights and darken the house. The living room was empty, Mom out maybe, or up in her room. Suzanne, too, up in hers, listening to music by herself. Nicole locked in hers, reading or doing homework on a Sat.u.r.day night. There was the feeling I'd brought danger to them, but also, miraculously, that I would take care of it, that whatever was coming, I was going to take care of it. I believed that, and my first thought was to turn off the lights and darken the house. The living room was empty, Mom out maybe, or up in her room. Suzanne, too, up in hers, listening to music by herself. Nicole locked in hers, reading or doing homework on a Sat.u.r.day night. There was the feeling I'd brought danger to them, but also, miraculously, that I would take care of it, that whatever was coming, I was going to take care of it.

Jeb had found a jacket and wrapped it around his foot, and I was walking straight back to the bathroom, smiling, shaking my head, only now aware that the knuckles of my right hand were stinging and had been for a while, that first punch connecting, a right cross that came up from my back foot and into Steve Lynch's sneering mouth. I ran warm water over my hands and soaped up and I looked in the mirror at the boy who hadn't backed down or run away or pleaded. I was smiling at him, and he was smiling back at me.

There were Bobby's and Sam's voices now, talking fast and excitedly. I turned off the water and rushed out to the living room where they stood telling Jeb their story, that after Lynch went down the bouncer started kicking everyone out, but Sam hadn't done anything and held his ground and the bouncer wrestled with him and Sam got low and punched him in the groin and he went down and three or four others rushed in to help and Sam gripped the doorjambs and kept yelling, "You can't push me out! You can't push me me!"

But they finally did, right onto the sidewalk on Was.h.i.+ngton Street, the door slamming behind him. Sam walked around the corner and down the sloped alleyway into the parking lot. Bobby was there squaring off with two of Lynch's boys. His eyes caught Sam coming across the lot. "Sam?" "Sam?"

"Bobby?"

And Bobby punched the biggest one in the face, then yanked his jacket over his head and went to work on his body, the other backing off.

"And you. you." Bobby turned to me. He was smiling wider and brighter than I'd ever seen him. Our living room looked small with him in it. "You f.u.c.kin' nailed nailed him." him."

I nodded and smiled, then I was laughing and I couldn't remember feeling this good about anything in my life ever before.

"Hey, Jeb," Sam said, "we found your slipper. It's in the car."

Jeb went outside for it. Bobby wanted to hear Sam's story again about taking on the big bouncer, and Sam was telling it when Jeb's voice came yelling from outside. "They've got sticks! You guys, they've got sticks sticks!"

The three of us were pus.h.i.+ng through the foyer and out the front door. A sedan had pulled up ahead of Sam's Duster, the back door of his car open, its interior light s.h.i.+ning on ice patches on the asphalt and the four men closing in on Jeb in the street. Each of them carried what looked like wooden clubs or broken chair legs, the three of us already there, four against four, Dana Lynch swinging his stick and yelling, "You're dead, motherf.u.c.ker!"

"I don't think so." The words came out of me, but my eyes were on the big one I'd already been in the s...o...b..nk with, the road slick under my feet, and Dana was slipping his way toward me. I could see his limp and remembered hearing months before about him getting his legs crushed between two cars at some party. Sam moved toward him, but the big one stepped in and pushed him back a step, and Bobby was calling to the others to make a move. Jeb stood in the middle holding his slipper, his foot still bare.

Sam, so used to ice under his feet, stepped around the big one and put one hand on Dana's chest and began talking him down.

"Sam, I respect you, but my brother's in the f.u.c.kin' hospital, hospital, man! He swallowed his two front man! He swallowed his two front teeth. teeth."

Dana swung his club at his side, and now my mother was yelling from the porch that she'd called the cops and in seconds a cruiser's spotlight was on us. The cop's window rolled down. "Break it up or every single one of you are going to jail! You hear me? Now screw screw!"

Then Lynch and his boys were gone and we were back in the house, laughing again, though not quite as hard, Jeb pulling that slipper onto his damp, pink foot.

THAT NIGHT I lay in the dark a long time and couldn't sleep. Steve Lynch would have false teeth for the rest of his life and never be quite as handsome again, and it was because of me. I knew I should probably feel bad about this, but I didn't. Not even a little. I kept seeing the pride and respect in Bobby's and Sam's eyes in the living room, the way they looked at me not only like I was one of them, but maybe even a special one of them, a guy with a gift; I only hit him once, and he was in the hospital hospital?

I kept seeing his face as I punched it. I still couldn't remember feeling the impact of the right cross, just the sight of him dropping like a switch had been turned off in his brain, the blood gus.h.i.+ng from his mouth, the shock in his eyes and how white his cheeks and forehead looked, how I kept swinging and would have hit him every time if the bouncer hadn't stopped me. How I wished he hadn't. How I wished I'd hurt Lynch even more than I did.

BECAUSE STEVE Lynch was seventeen, the town closed the Tap's doors and they stayed closed the rest of the winter. Word was out, too, that I would soon be in the hospital myself. Not just from the Lynches and their friends but their cousins, the Murphy brothers. I didn't know about this family connection till I saw them cruising by my gas station in a dented olive Chrysler, Dennis looking out the pa.s.senger window at me, his older brother Frank driving, two or three more in the backseat. My mouth dried up and I could feel my heart beating in my palms. I reached for the club and held it in my lap till the car disappeared under the railroad bridge for Lafayette Square. I stood and pulled open the slider to get some air.

Twice a day, while doing errands for his father, Bobby would pull up to the pumps in his pickup truck to check on me. Sam, too. He was a student at Merrimack College down in North Andover and at least once a day between cla.s.ses he'd swing by in his Duster. I'd tell them both I was fine, that they were wasting their time. This was partly true because Dunkin' Donuts was right up the hill, and there always seemed to be at least one cruiser parked there most of the morning or afternoon. Also, I worked the day s.h.i.+ft on a busy street, what were they going to do? But really, I was more angry than scared. I didn't like how some were still saying I'd sucker-punched Steve. A sucker punch was walking up to someone with a smile, then surprising him. Or tapping someone on the shoulder only to pop him once he turns around. Lynch had pushed my brother down the stairs and was calling me on and I gave him what he'd never expected. And since that one punch, it was as if I'd knocked a sandbag loose inside me and now a torrent of bad feeling had pushed aside all the other sandbags and I needed another place for it all to go. Another face.

SAM AND I were doing weighted dips in the bas.e.m.e.nt when Suzanne came downstairs crying. She wore a dark sweater and hip-hugger jeans and her eyeliner was smeared. After her rape, no one in the family talked about it much, and neither did she. She may have gone to a counselor once or twice, but I don't think so, and now she knew for sure something she'd suspected for a long time: that Kench was cheating on her. He was living with a nurse named Denise over the state line in New Hamps.h.i.+re, and Suzanne wanted her things back, her record player, a turquoise ring of hers he'd liked and stuck on his finger. "Please, you guys, I don't want them in her house her house." She covered her face and Sam put his ma.s.sive, sweating arm around her. In minutes we were driving north up the highway in our sweats, our muscles still pumped with blood.