You're Next

‘Then why don’t you take it?’ Dubronski says. ‘Oh – that’s right. Because I’ll give you a beat-down.’

Something hard and gemlike flares in Mike’s chest. It is blue-hot, but this time as controlled as a pilot light. He leans forward, says, ‘Yeah, but you have to sleep sometime. And my bed is right next to yours.’

Dubronski’s face changes. Tony M stops laughing. Dubronski recovers, quickly, with tough words. He cannot give up the shirt, not now, not with six sets of eyes watching from the surrounding cots. But the stench of his fear lingers in the room after dark. The spell has been broken.

The next day Dubronski limps to school. Mike is the Wearer of the Blue-Striped Shirt.

He is in the bay window as usual. Waiting. Michael dear, go outside and play – you practically live in that window. There is a new kid, skin and bones, with huge feet like a puppy’s paws. When he arrived, his hair was curly and long, but now it is close-cropped like everyone else’s. Head lice make their rounds with such frequency that the Couch Mother has ruled for crew cuts; she wields a pair of clippers with the impersonal proficiency of a bureaucrat denying a request. Function over form, always.

The new kid has a dog name to go with the puppy paws – Shep. Right now Dubronski and Tony M are pummeling him. From his perch on the cushion, Mike watches him get back up, lips bleeding. Another punch. Dubronski’s mouth moving: Stay down, ya little faggot. The neighbor’s kids are at their windows; they are used to the Roman theater that is 1788 Shady Lane. Shep struggles, finds his feet. Dubronski draws back his fist for the fifth or fifteenth time. The Couch Mother’s voice sails from the living room – ‘Diii-ner’ – terminating the day’s festivities.

The new kid’s voice is funny, too loud – Hey, Retard Voice, why you sound like such a ree-tard – so he doesn’t talk much. He eats at the long kitchen table, head down, shoveling, his rail-thin body burning off the calories before he finishes chewing. The Couch Mother arises to refill her jug of Crystal Light, and Dubronski leans across the table and swats Shep’s fork as it goes into his mouth. Shep emits a faint bark. The Couch Mother whirls. ‘What’s wrong, Shepherd dear?’ He winces, shakes his head. When Couch Mother disappears again behind the refrigerator door, he dips his mouth into a napkin, drools blood.

A dream. Beneath flickering eyelids Mike’s mind dances with fantasies of domesticity, of waffle irons and cream-white linens. He wakes up cramped on the too-small cot, staring at a ceiling blotched seaweed brown from water damage.

Back on the yellow plaid cushion. Waiting. Shep out front. Couch Mother engrossed in a talk show and a cantaloupe in the TV room. Outside, Dubronski hammers Shep into the dirt. Shep gets up, jeans torn, knees bloodied. Even Tony M can horn in on the action, can knock the small kid down. Mike can hear Dubronski shouting, exasperated, ‘Stay down, douchebag! Stay down.’ Shep rises again. Mike turns his eyes to the end of the road. There is no station wagon there.

Now it is sloppy-joe night. Zucchini was on sale yesterday, so it substitutes for onions. Zucchini bits are not meant to appear in sloppy joes, with good reason. But the foster children are hungry; they eat with relish. The Police da-da-da from the crackly radio by the toaster. Dubronski has just taken his insulin – Remember, Charlie darling: Cold and clammy, you need some candy. Dry and hot, you need a shot – so he must wait fifteen minutes to eat. When the time is up, he scrambles to the kitchen. On his way back, he pauses behind Shep, extends his overladen tray above Shep’s head, lets it clap to the table in front of him. The sound is like a gunshot in a bank vault, but Shep doesn’t so much as blink. A spray of runny meat spatters his face. Unfazed, he scoops a fingerful off his cheek and pops it into his mouth. The Couch Mother looks at him sidewise, her chins ajiggle, and the next day Shep arrives late to school wearing hearing aids from the Shriners Hospital. On the playground at recess, Dubronski heat-seeks his target. ‘Hey, look at the old man! Shep needs hearing aids like a old man!’ A crowd has gathered. Shep pulls the flesh-colored units from both ears, drops them to the asphalt, crushes them under a sneaker. His stare is level, Zen-like, and for once his voice is even. ‘I don’t need anything.’

A rumor makes its rounds, something involving Shep’s drunk of a dad and a gun with blanks. Like a stubborn shellfish, Shep will not let himself be pried open, will not let his treasure spill. Whereas Mike has strength, Shep has will, and Mike is sharp enough to know which is the rarer commodity.

Time scribbles forward a few months and there Mike is, still on the piss-smelling yellow cushion, nose pigged against the bay window. An unearthly light pervades 1788 Shady Lane, turning it slate gray; it is a black-and-white movie. The street is empty. A station wagon makes the turn, and Mike feels his heart soar. It nears and – yes – pulls to the curb and – yes – that is a man, a solitary man who climbs out – yes – and makes his way up the walk, and a fall of light breaks through the trees and the slate gray pall, lighting his face in full color and – yes – it is his father. Mike runs to the door and is swept up in strong arms, he and his father spinning like a shampoo-commercial couple in a field of foxtail yellow, and he hugs him, feels the cheek warm against his own, the grit of stubble beneath the clean shave, the crinkle of the starched collar. His father sets him down and says, I am so sorry. I came back for you at the playground, and you were gone. I’ve been looking for you all these months, every waking hour, for-going food and sleep, and look – he holds out his shirt cuff with the bloodred blotch – this is just a splash of cranberry juice, and look – he points to the car, and there, waving from the passenger seat, his mother, her smile sending out a light all its own and -

Mike is shaken awake. He tugs away, buries his face in the pillow, rooting out remnants of the dream. But the wide hand is persistent. He rolls onto his back, stares up at the perfumed face, lax with gravity. ‘Michael dear, come with me.’ Instantly he is drenched in panic sweat – another move, another abandonment – but he is walking, in underwear, on ice-numb bare feet, following Couch Mother to doom or desertion. She moves on hushed footsteps; the house creaks under the weight of her. Into the kitchen, into a slant of yellow thrown by the outdoor security lamp, and Mike squints and sees on the table: a cake. His name frilled in frosting. He looks at Couch Mother, but she is watching the cake, her eyes alight. This is their little secret. His mind sputters. ‘It’s not my birthday.’ ‘No,’ Couch Mother says, ‘it’s our birthday. A year to the day I got you.’ His breath leaves him in a huff. He lunges to her, hugs, burying his face in the soft folds of her nightgown. He says, ‘I love you,’ and she says, ‘Let’s not get carried away.’

The next day he finds himself again on the cushion. Waiting. The bay window, smudged with a thousand marks from his nose and forehead. A thousand and one. Waiting. He thinks back on the time he has passed on this cat- piss cushion and wonders if this is all life is, one year after the last, nothing memorable, a sun baked torment. Outside, Shep is receiving his daily beating. He lies on his back in the fall-gorgeous leaves, Dubronski brandishing a fist over his face. ‘Stay the fuck down, runt. Stay down.’ Shep finds his feet. Mike’s eyes move through the arcade of yellow-orange leaves and their geometric patterns to the end of the street, to the station wagon that has still not appeared. Waiting. He tries to stop time, to freeze the image like a photograph, this unextraordinary moment, just to have it, just to have something he can hold on to, something he can keep. He waits for his father.

And then, at once, he hates him.

Shep is standing again – no, not anymore. Tony M, inexplicably wearing an Angels batting helmet, is cackling that idiotic laugh, thumping Dubronski’s shoulders, leaping with joy. Shep manages to get to all fours, but he has halted there. For the first time, he has lost momentum. Dubronski jeering, ‘I told you, you fuckin’ deaf runt. I told you I’d make you stay down.’ Shep looks up at him, the looming fist, unable to rise to it. Mike knows now that if Shep doesn’t rise, something beautiful will die out there on the browning front lawn of 1788 Shady Lane.

Mike walks outside. Dubronski stands over Shep, victorious. Tony M and three others have formed a half circle around Dubronski, crowing victoriously. They turn when the screen door bangs. Mike crosses to them, Dubronski’s unease registering on his broad features. Mike walks in front of the half circle, stands facing Dubronski, two feet away, the distance of an upper-cut. Shep is behind Mike, still on all fours; Mike can feel the heat of him against the backs of his calves.

Mike says, loudly, ‘Get up.’

He hears Shep breathing hard. He hears Shep grunt with exertion. And then Mike reads the shadow.

Shep is standing.

Dubronski’s face flushes. ‘You queers deserve each other,’ he says, but he is backpedaling, knocking through the others, dispersing them. They go inside. All is quiet at 1788 Shady Lane. Dusk is coming, and there will be dinner soon.

Shep brushes himself off, as composed as a businessman lint-rolling a suit. Mike heads up the walk.