Trash Mountain. Bradley Bazzle
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She said, “Benjamin Shippers. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I did a bad drawing,” I said. “I’m very sorry for it.”
“I believe I know your sister,” Principal Winthrope said. She didn’t seem to care about the drawing. She said, “Ruthanne Shippers is one of our finest students.”
“Really?”
She laughed. “Don’t act so surprised. I’m helping Ruthanne apply to college.”
It was the first I ever heard about college. I said, “Thank you. That’s very nice of you. Which college is she gonna go to?”
Principal Winthrope laughed again. I guess I was a comedian to her. She said, “Ruthanne hasn’t applied yet, Ben. Do you mind if I call you Ben?”
“No.”
“Tell me, Ben, do you care about your sister?”
“Yes.”
“Will you help me?”
“I guess.”
“Your sister has a bright future. I want you to encourage her.”
“To go to college?”
“That’s up to her. But I want you to let her know she can do anything she wants to do, and that goes for you too.” The last part sounded like an afterthought.
“Okay,” I said. “Should I go back to class now?”
“That would be fine,” she said. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”
I left with mixed feelings. On one hand, I was glad to get off easy without a big lecture, but on the other I was confused about Ruthanne. I had only a vague understanding of college but knew it involved leaving home most times. I had a notion that most college graduates were bankers, because that’s what Grandpa called everybody who wore a suit to work, and the ones who weren’t bankers were teachers. Even gym teachers had to go to college. But Ruthanne was too shy to be a teacher.
It wasn’t long before kids asked to see the drawing that earned a shriek from Mrs. Bianculli, plus got me sent to the principal’s office, and I showed it to them gladly. Mostly kids said “gross!” or “you’re sick!” but sometimes they liked it. One time this guy Pete Gomez said, “Dang, you’re a good drawer,” which wasn’t something I had thought about myself. I just drew because I was bored.
Pete Gomez seemed like a pretty nice guy, so when he waved to me in the parking lot a few days later, I waved back. Then I noticed who he was standing with: the Haislip white boys. I was curious about those boys, but also wary. In addition to what Ruthanne said about them being secret Nazis, there was the fact that girls avoided them, which was a bad sign in my experience, not because I was interested in girls but because girls had more sense about danger. But now that the boys were looking at me, I didn’t have a choice but to head towards them. I was nervous. I hooked my thumbs through the shoulder-straps of my backpack so I wouldn’t fidget my hands.
The boys were gathered around an open trunk. They showed me what was inside it: a little rifle and a warm twelve-pack of beer. They asked me, what did I think about that? I said it looked good to me, and they laughed like hell.
“Listen to this white trash motherfucker,” Pete said, and the others laughed some more. The only one who didn’t laugh was a boy named Ronnie Mlezcko, who I knew by reputation. Ronnie Mlezcko had looked real big and old in middle school, but now he was kind of small, like me, and just plain old. His hair was black and greasy, and he didn’t wear any of the cowboy stuff his friends wore. He wore dirty black jeans and boxy button-down shirts with pit-stains, like something a jailbird would wear.
Pete asked if I knew how to shoot but before I could answer, Ronnie said, “Of course he doesn’t. He’s just a kid. A pussy, too, by the smell of him.”
“You’re right,” I said cautiously, “I don’t know how to shoot.”
Ronnie seemed confused by my approach. He said, “Damn right you don’t.”
“Yep,” I said.
A handsome boy in a cammo cap said, “Don’t be a dick, Ronnie. Let’s go,” and they all piled into the car. I didn’t know if I was supposed to go with them. I didn’t want to, frankly, so I was thankful when Pete gave me a low five and said, “See ya, dog.”
That night I couldn’t sleep, thinking about those boys. I wondered what it would be like to be part of a group like that. I wondered what they saw in me. I expected they knew I was trouble, like them.
Pete Gomez kept waving me over to the parking lot during lunch and after school, where they’d be standing around the same car, which turned out to belong to a silent boy called Red Dog who had big sideburns and reddish stubble. Sometimes they’d show me a gun they had, or some more beer, or a bottle of whiskey, or some porno magazines, which I didn’t understand the use of until I remembered they didn’t have internet at home in their trailers, and probably not much privacy either.
By the end of the week I was just standing there nodding while they talked about stuff, wondering what exactly my purpose was but not daring to speak unless spoken to. Their conversations were mostly about shooting and drinking and this or that girl who had “big old titties” or “juicy black thighs,” or this or that guy who gave one of them a dirty look and was “gonna get his soon enough.” Their speech was peppered with old-timey words and phrases like “reckon” and “hell-bent for leather,” whatever that meant. One time Ronnie said as soon as he turned eighteen he was gonna “light out for the territories,” which I took to mean someplace like Utah with lots of canyons and whatnot for hiding out.
The group dynamics were odd. Pete Gomez remained the friendliest of them, and he had to be since they razzed him so hard for being Mexican. Pete had a wispy mustache and wore his black hair in a ragged fade he did himself, using dog clippers. “I ain’t nothing but a dog,” he said with pride. The handsome boy in the cammo cap was named Kyle James, and he seemed to fancy himself a romantic figure. He said that with a name like Kyle James how could he avoid a life of crime? I guess he meant like Jesse James, but really he was the prudest of the bunch. He went to church with his parents, Pete said, and he didn’t actually live in a trailer, just a regular house. Kyle James even had a girlfriend, off and on, and when it was off he would act real surly and complain about her, then the other guys would ask him what it was like to “bang” her and he would tell them she was “the worst piece of pussy” he ever had. I was surprised they said all that stuff in front of me. It made me uncomfortable, frankly, but the moment it got too serious Pete would pop the trunk and show me, say, an unmarked bottle of clear whiskey made by Red Dog’s people and ask me what did I think about that? Like always, I told him it looked alright to me, and they laughed like hell. The only one who didn’t laugh was Ronnie. He seemed suspicious, like he didn’t want to say too much in front of me for fear of having his darkest true thoughts used against him, later. I respected him for that. He seemed like a person with a secret inner life, whatever it was.
One day Pete waved me over and things seemed a bit different. Nobody was laughing and everybody was looking at me instead of ignoring me. There was a sort of solemnity over the group. Pete said, “We got something important to show you.”
I thought it was some kind of prank until Ronnie said, “Don’t show this kid shit, you Mexican idiot.”
“Be cool,” Pete said, but Ronnie stormed off to the other side of the car, where he sat on the hood with his back to us.
“You don’t have to tell me about it,” I said, and not just to placate Ronnie; I had a sense that something bad was about to happen, like they were gonna open the trunk and show me a dead body.
“You’re goddamn right we don’t have to,” Kyle James said, “but we’re going to.” He looked at Red Dog, who popped the trunk.
Inside the trunk was a greasy looking towel wrapped around something about the size and shape of a phone book. Pete reached in and peeled back the