all this, a dweeby little spazz born with coke-bottle glasses and an overbite.
Vince likes to dispute this fact. He claims we both came up with the nickname. If being in the same room as someone who thinks of something means you think up the thing too, then yes, Vince helped. But he knows the truth.
I wasn’t close to Ray like Vince was. But I did contribute.
Ray loved it. It made him feel tough and dangerous. And then you have all the variations: Death Ray, Gay Run, Stun Gunner, and so on.
I suppose I felt good about making him feel cool like that. A nickname lends personality to the bearer, indicates a reputation, prior achievements of note, that there are people on your side—a tribe, however dwindling. Says, I have done things, I have friends. But all the nicknames turned out pretty useless in the end.
*
As Vince drives, I say, “Ray the Gun. Remember that day?”
He glances my way. “Dan broke a broom handle on me that night, that’s what I remember.”
“Dan’s the one to blame—you keep a loaded handgun in a shoebox under the bed with kids in the house, you’re asking for it. He ought to know better. Under the bed’s the first place they look.”
“You should have let me handle it.”
“Like you’re some hostage negotiator. It was not the smartest tactic in the world—fine. Did anyone get shot?”
He frowns at the window, changes lanes again.
“What use is there arguing about it anyway? Look where we are now,” I say.
He lets out a long, slow breath. “I remember us posting up on the couch after all that, just in time to catch The Undertaker tombstone Mr. Perfect. Not missing a beat.”
“No use letting all that beer get warm…” I say.
“Marcy kicked both Ray’s and Dan’s asses that night, actually.”
“And you beat mine. Nearly broke my nose. Don’t think I forgot.”
Vince wags his head. “Raygun. Damn…”
Remembering the bullet hole, like a shark’s vacant eye staring at me, lodged in the wall just inches wide of my left ear. The one and only slug ever shot off in my presence, that for the longest time I was convinced had my name on it. But the world had different plans for me, didn’t it. I put on my everything’s-fine grin. The world is screaming past my shoulder in a humming blur of frozen sludge and rail.
*
And then there was later that summer, the summer I left, and the heat wave that claimed over 200 lives across the county. The power grid couldn’t handle the strain and failed on the second night; everyone was plunged in a smothering dark that left everything tacky, damp, and smudged. All of us slightly addlebrained and reluctant to get the mail.
Leaving the front and back doors open only invited breezes that came in and swept through the house like the trapped air of a hot parked car. Playing the piano left it slippery and glistening with so much sweat I worried it would somehow warp the action on the keys. I didn’t play for days.
Vince was turning a little bitter, a little weird about me leaving, but we still hung out pretty much every day, drinking Schlitz or clowning around or griping about not having money, or planning Vince’s wedding, or having nothing to do at all, really. That summer sucked, for everybody.
We were all fooling around out in back, playing with the hose, trying to get a water war started against some of the neighborhood gang. The afternoon humidity made everyone too slow to choose sides, set ground rules, so it never really materialized. We mostly ended up sprawled on the porch, telling each other what we wished we had to eat—even though the fridge was probably full of stuff, it never looked good to us and even if that were not the case, the heat left us with little motivation to do much but moan and groan.
I wished for a foot-long barbecue beef and cheese submarine sandwich, butter garlic fries from the Lemon Tree diner up the road, a gallon of raspberry iced tea. Vince wished for thick wedges of cold pizza, a strong bloody Mary.
All Ray wished he had was popsicles, so we took a walk down to Bad’s General Store because they sold bomb pops. We were too lazy to find our shoes, so we just cut through spiky yellowed lawns and searing back lots in bare feet and towels ’round our swim trunks. Rudy Tomczak wouldn’t care about selling to shoeless kids on a burning day. We bought the last box.
We passed by Gavin’s on the way back, and there was Bullets tied up in the sun. His leash was looped in the tires of Gavin’s pickup parked in the bed of gravel outside his house.
The dog was pinned in that punishing midday blast of light and couldn’t get to the Tupperware bowl of old gross water that a couple pill bugs thought was a swimming pool. He was mangy and hyperventilating, letting the green flies roaming his belly and face have their way.
Ray started wandering over, wanting to get a better look. Ray was curious. He maybe thought Bullets was already a goner and wanted to check it out. We trailed him, brushing stones and twigs off of our heels, while the alien frequency of the cicadas droning rose and fell and made the stillness that followed somehow deeper and sort of blue to me.
Ray, shielding his eyes from the sunlight shafting through those elms, walked over. When Bullets growled, it was more like a purr of annoyance, seeing as he didn’t bother to move.
Nearing up until he was about within arm’s reach, Ray offered Bullets a lick of his orange popsicle. Like it was a microphone, he pointed it toward Bullets’ slack mouth, grew closer until the cold blunt nose of it landed on the dog’s tongue. I neared too, as Ray gently ran it back and forth like he was applying chapstick, letting it melt until Bullets tasted it, smacked his lips, and suddenly snapped to life and began lapping at it desperately.
Vince and I watched for a while as Bullets licked down Ray’s bomb pop and even took the popsicle stick. Ray rubbed his belly, shooed the flies. Well, I thought, Ray made a pal today.
Then Vince went back to the road to smoke in the shade there.
“Yo,” I said, tapping Ray’s bony shoulder, “time to go.”
“He’ll fry.”
“We’re gonna get in trouble. Come on.”
Ray frowned. “Would you wanna dry up like a worm in the road?”
“You’re a little puke, Ray. I swear.”
So, I get to freeing the stupid leash from the front tire it had gotten wound around when the dog must have tried hiding underneath the truck to escape the heat. The growl Bullets gave me was this gurgling in his throat. When he bared his teeth I clapped his mouth shut, held him by the muzzle, held it closed, and getting nose-to-snout, told him to be nice, I was helping him.
His growling unraveled as I shushed him and got him to chill out, but still, those blank eyes stared right into me, black as tar bubbles.
I said to Ray to give him some room, and unhooked the leash from Bullets’ collar. Then I stood and let go. Bullets immediately galloped over to the water bowl and drank it dry, bugs and all. Then he started bouncing around, all giddy to be free, and leapt into the trash cans, knocked one over, and started disemboweling the garbage bags inside. What anything chained up too long would do.
We were walking out when we heard a voice go, “No, no, no no—you don’t get to pet my dog. No one does. Only me.”
And there came Gavin from around back, coming toward us, sweating awfully. Glistening streaks ran down his face, darkening his sleeveless shirt.
He knelt next to Ray and casually took him by the back of his neck, suddenly trying to be neighborly. “Now, you know this is private property. You know this is my dog,” he said to Ray, shaking him lightly as he spoke. “You stay right there,” he told Ray, and Ray obeyed. So did I.
I