ELEVENTH
EXCEPT FOR HOW MY mother, all hopey-eyed and cooing, kept asking me whether I was feeling any better, the rest of the weekend of the murder at Stevie’s was unremarkable. Monday, though, was a teacher service day, and that meant school let out at eleven, which in turn meant I and the rest of the students of District 90 got home in time to watch Sally Jessy, The Geraldo Show, and the intervening lunchtime newsbreak at noon, a seven-minute update on local affairs I’d intended to use the bathroom during until it turned out the lead item concerned one Reinhardt Alfons “Grandpa” Strumm, who had, at his arraignment earlier in the day, voiced accusations of police brutality, and promised he’d sue the city of Wheelatine “til all the filthy little piggies [went] POP.” The brief interview, conducted in the courthouse parking lot, where Grandpa Strumm, his arm in a sling, spoke into a foam-capped mike about irony (“What’s ironic’s my family’s property’s destroyed, and they’re the ones get accused of negligence. Ironic’s los cerdos smashing my wrist up, and I’m the one gets held in jail.”), was intercut with old monochrome mugshots of him—no fewer than ten, a couple of which, judging by tattoo and wrinklage deficits, appeared to have been taken in the 1950s—and video of Stevie’s uncle and cousin shouldering the murdered swingset to their pickup.
As the segment gave way to the weather report, the telephone rang. Rory Riley. “Dude, you’re a star,” he said. “You gotta let me know when you pick the next victim.”
Calls kept coming in all through Geraldo. Everyone wanted the same information. Times, locations. Their questions made me nervous. By the fifth or sixth call—from Wheelatine High School’s own Milo Sorkin, porno and fireworks peddler to the underaged, a boy who seemed to believe my name was Built—I’d discovered my resolve: there wouldn’t be another murder. Not in front of any audience at least. I shouldn’t have even agreed to do the last one. I had no regrets about helping Stevie’s swingset, but what had my doing so publicly gotten me? Surely not the girl I’d been trying to impress; it had, in fact, led her, however incidentally, into the arms (or at least the limo) of an unbeatable rival. No. I was done. No more, I told the callers, and please spread the word.
Grandpa Strumm, on Tuesday, made the Herald’s front page, and inspired a pair of dueling editorials on the causes of criminal recidivism. One writer claimed the souls of felons were rotten, the other that the viewpoint that felons’ souls were rotten systematically reinforced felonious behaviors. Each one was titled “No Forgiveness,” and they both concluded the convicted were doomed. I imagined Stevie reading them that morning over breakfast, getting upset, maybe even crying. During homeroom announcements, I wrote her a note.
Dear Stevie,
I read those editorials today, and I just kept thinking, “Shut your piehole, cakeface.” I bet everyone who read them thought that, too. Everyone with a brain at least. Those newspaper hacks haven’t ever been to prison. No way they understand a man like your grandpa.
I hope you’re not in too much trouble from the party. If you’re allowed to go out, and you maybe want to come over and watch a video or something, then I think you should. Maybe it would make you feel a lot better. KARATE KID, maybe? FERRIS BUELLER? I think either of those would get your mind off this stuff. KARATE KID II might, also, and we own that one. Also, if you want to, you can totally bring Jonboat if you think him being there would make you happy, and if you don’t want to come over, I still think you should watch some movies, either by yourself, or with Jonboat, or maybe just your sister, but you’re definitely welcome at my house for sure.
Yours Truly,
Belt
I was proud of the opening paragraph’s logic, and its formulation—it sounded like my father when my father sounded strong—and I felt even better about the noble sentiments I believed came across in the closing sentence. I could hardly wait til Science, to witness Stevie’s face when she would read what I’d written and she’d see there was more to me than she’d formerly perceived, something lovable maybe. I’d just need to make certain, before passing her the note, that she had read those editorials. If she hadn’t, then I’d have to keep the note to myself lest it cause the kind of pain it was meant to assuage.
The fact that I’d even consider that contingency seemed to mean, at first, that I was as sensitive and thoughtful a person as I wanted—and wanted Stevie Strumm—to believe I was, but no sooner had I finished congratulating myself than I realized just how disappointed I’d be if it turned out she hadn’t read the editorials. Which isn’t to say I enjoyed the thought of Stevie suffering; I enjoyed the thought of relieving her suffering. I wasn’t sadistic, only selfish. Nonetheless, I was invested in her pain. And if this prolix, reflexive train of thought stinks to you as it does to me of an epiphanic and overly processed coming-of-age, I apologize, reader, for failing so miserably—this wasn’t the moment I became an adult. Not even close. This was the moment I became an adolescent. It was even clumsier than how it sounds, too. It took me whole hours to start feeling compromised. It took me til Math, when Rory Riley, just before the second bell, stood up on his desk to announce he’d be doing the Ethiopia Walkathon, and Jonboat stood up on the desk beside him and pledged to match every dollar Rory raised.
After Math came Science Lab, and Stevie wasn’t there.
The teacher partnered me with Blackie and his aspiring toady, schoolwide chess champ Harold Euwenus. “Why the long face, fuck-ass?” Blackie asked me. “Sad about pawpaw?”
“ ‘Pawpaw!’ ” said Euwenus. “I bet she does call him ‘pawpaw.’ They’re total white trash.”
“My family says ‘pawpaw,’ ” Blackie said to Harold. “You know, you sound like a girl from a movie, Euwenus. You sound like a fat chick who wants to fuck a stud. You want to fuck a stud?”
“No,” said Euwenus.
“Yeah you do,” Blackie said. “What stud you want to fuck? You can tell us, fatgirl. Come on. What stud?”
Euwenus dropped his eyes and futzed around with the slide we were supposed to be scoping.
Blackie thumbed his own chest, winking a little, while, in order, I guess, to make Euwenus feel worse, he niced up his tone with me. “My brother, Mike,” he said, “was at the tavern where they had the party last night, and he saw the old man flop off the stool. He saw him eat a lot of pills the other bikers kept giving him and going to the bathroom every ten minutes, like probably to snort stuff, plus drinking Jäger.”
“Wait,” I said. “Grandpa Strumm?” I said.
“Who else?” Blackie said.
“Is he alright?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Blackie. “Mike told me he was flopping around so hard that one of the bikers had to like actually put a boot down on his chest to keep him in place so another one could yank out the tongue from his throat, and that the other one lost the tip of his finger. Mike said he saw some bone and puked. He said the bone was real white, like whiter than you’d think, and that all the gang guys puked, too, when they saw it, and it was while they were puking that Strumm knocked himself out against the floor, and they thought he was dead when the ambulance got him, but the guy on the radio this morning said coma, so.”