Pete Whitten tipped his head back to kill his beer, his long blond hair catching the wind.
The boys grew quiet on the ride home.
Raymond was in his bed, listening to the crickets making their sounds out in the yard. He and James kept the windows open in their room three seasons of the year. Their father had made wood-frame screens that slid apart like wings to fit the space and hold up the sash windows, which no longer stayed up on their own, as their tracked ropes had long since torn. Ernest Monroe could fix most anything with his hands.
Raymond, wearing only briefs, lay atop the sheets, wide awake. He was excited by what he’d found and also feeling a bit guilty for going through his brother’s dresser drawers. James had come in a while ago, said he was tired, and flopped down on his bed. That would have been the time to talk about the gun, but Raymond had been hesitant. He had been wrong to do what he’d done. He’d have to admit that his interest had been stirred by Charles and Larry, and Raymond knew that James didn’t think much of them. It was complicated, trying to find the best way to start the conversation. By the time he’d gotten up the courage to do it, a stillness had fallen in the room that told Raymond he had waited too long.
“Hey, James,” said Raymond.
The crickets rubbed their legs together. A little dog barked from the backyard of the tiny house down the street where Miss Anna lived.
Softly, Raymond said, “James.”
Four
Three teenage boys cruised the streets in a Gran Torino, drinking beer, smoking weed, and listening to the radio. Three Dog Night’s “Black and White” came from the dash speaker. The vocalist sang, “The world is black, the world is white / Together we learn to read and write.” Billy sang along but changed the words to “Your daddy’s black, your mama’s white / Your daddy likes his poontang tight.” They had heard Billy sing this one many times, but they were laughing as if it were new to them. The three of them had just blown a fat bone. Though the temperature was in the upper eighties, they had rolled up the windows to keep the high in the car.
Billy sat under the wheel of the Torino, a green-over-green two-door with a 351 Cleveland under the hood, his dad’s latest loaner. He wore a red bandanna over his thick black hair. He looked like a heavy pirate.
“Pin this piece,” said Alex from the backseat.
Billy gave the Ford gas. Beneath them, dual pipes rumbled pleasantly as they headed up a long rise on an east-west residential thruway. They were nearing the small commercial district not far from their neighborhood.
“Mach One,” said Billy, reverently. “Hear it roar.”
“It’s a Torino,” said Pete, riding shotgun.
“Same engine as the Mach,” said Billy. “That’s all I’m sayin.”
“To ree no,” said Pete.
“Least I’m drivin a car,” said Billy.
“It’s off your dad’s lot,” said Pete. “It’s like a rental.”
“Still, I’m drivin it. Wasn’t for me, you’d be walkin.”
“To your mother’s house,” said Pete.
Billy’s wide shoulders shook. He laughed easily, the way big guys did, even when a friend was cracking on his mother.
“Your baby sister, too,” said Pete, holding his hand palm up so that Alex could slap him five. Alex did it sharply, and the action made Pete’s straight shoulder-length hair move about his face.
Pete killed his Schlitz and tossed the can over the seat. It hit the other ones they had drained that day, now in a heap on the floorboard, and made a dull sound.
“I need cigarettes,” said Billy.
“Pull into the Seven-Ereven,” said Pete, like he was a Chinese trying to talk American.
They parked and got out of the car. They wore 501 straight-leg Levi’s, rolled up at the cuffs, and pocket T- shirts. Pete wore Adidas Superstars, and Billy sported a pair of denim Hanover wedges. Alex wore his Chucks. The boys weren’t stylish, but they had down-county style.
The store was not a 7-Eleven, but it had been one for a time, and the three boys still identified it as such. Now run by a family of Asians, its primary offerings were beer and wine. As the boys entered, Climax’s “Precious and Few” played through a cheap sound system from behind the counter. One of the Asians was singing along softly, and when he came to “precious,” he sang “pwecious.” When Alex heard this he chuckled. He found these things funny when he was high. Alex went to the candy aisle and stared at its display.
Pete and Billy had a brief conversation that ended with a bit of laughter. Then Pete went to a spinning rack and tried on a hat with a hooked-bass patch stitched on its front while Billy bought cigarettes, Hostess cherry pies, and beer. They never carded Billy here or anywhere else. He looked like a man.
Outside, Billy broke the cellophane on a hardpack of Marlboro Reds, tore out the foil, and extracted a cigarette. He fired it up with a Zippo lighter that had an eight ball inlaid on it. He had lifted it at the Cue Club after some greaser had left it lying on a rail.
“What do you girls wanna do now?” said Pete.
They were standing by the car in the direct sun. The heat was coming up in waves off the sidewalk. Billy held the bag of beer and cherry pies under his arm.
“Drink this brew before it gets too hot to drink it,” said Billy.
“Who don’t know that?” said Alex.
Pete watched Billy smoke. Pete didn’t use cigarettes himself. His father said his friends came from uneducated people and that was why they had stupid habits. Pete took mild offense at this and expressed it vocally, but he felt in his heart that his father was right.
“Y’all ready to get torched?” said Billy.
Alex shrugged a Why not? There was nothing to do on this Saturday afternoon but get higher than they were now.
Billy finished smoking. He flicked his cigarette out into the parking lot with practiced nonchalance.
“Let’s roll, Clitoris,” said Pete to Billy Cachoris.
They got back into the Ford.
They drank six more beers and smoked another joint of Colombian, scored that morning, and got stoned and reckless behind the alcohol they had been pouring on empty stomachs. “Tumbling Dice” was finishing up on the radio, and Pete had cranked it up. In front, Billy and Pete were heatedly discussing the Fourth of July Stones concert, which had included good bud, a party ball of sour mash whiskey, and a girl in a halter top.
“God made halters,” said Billy, “so blind guys can grab tit.”
“Jenny Maloney,” said Pete, naming the pom-pom girl at their high school whom the boys called the Hole. “She’s got this one halter top, boy…”
Alex remembered the girl in the halter top and Peanut jeans who had danced in front of him during the concert. He could recall the details of the entire day. He, Billy, and Pete had gone down to RFK Stadium on the morning of the Fourth in the Whitten family Oldsmobile and parked in the main lot, where the Dead and the Who were blasting from the open windows of cars and vans. They had brought sandwiches, packed by Alex’s mom, and a dude in a wheelchair traded them a small piece of hash for a ham-and-Swiss. They smoked it, got up immediately, and went to join the crowds moving toward the venue. When the gates opened, the expected chaotic surge ensued, caused by the festival seating policy, which had thousands trying to enter the stadium at once. Coolers holding bottles of beer and liquor were being smashed by security guards, and at one point Alex was pinned against a chain-link fence, only to be rescued by Billy, who yelled, “Jerry Kramer!” with joy as he body-blocked a big man to the ground and set Alex free. Alex, Billy, and Pete found seats behind the dugout, where Alex had sat with his father at baseball games before the Nats left town, and commenced smoking one of the many joints they had rolled that morning with Top papers. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas came on first, played “Dancing in the Street,” and when they sang the phrase “Baltimore and D.C.,” the audience lit up. The girl in the halter top danced before them, her hips alive, and the boys imagined her in the act, all of them transfixed. Stevie Wonder appeared next, oddly
