sounds like a hard thing to learn, and a lot of punches to take to learn it,” Fat Bobby said.
We’d reached the dirt road that I’d taken from home to the woods, and I stopped. Fat Bobby took a few steps more before he noticed, then he stopped too and looked back at me, his hands in his pockets, his gut bulging beneath his shirt. He stood slouched, shoulders slumped, back bowed, as if a great weight were strapped to him.
“I’d rather have a quick and early hard lesson than to live my life taking shit from assholes,” I said, and regretted it even as I said the words. I felt and heard the heat in my voice, and I saw pain and hurt in Fat Bobby’s eyes as I looked him up and down as I spoke.
It was obvious what I was looking at, and that I wanted him to know it. Him. I was looking at him: his fatness, his complete and utter defeatist attitude, his self-pity bullshit. The hurt my words caused him were immediate, his doughy face falling slack in shame and embarrassment.
“Point taken,” he said, looking away from me, looking at his feet, idly kicking at a rock. “Geez,” he added, and that was all. Not “geez, why you being such a jerk?” or “geez, don’t be an asshole” or anything else that any self-respecting person would have added.
Just “geez,” and that one-word response did more than anything else could have. It made me feel ashamed. I felt embarrassed. I felt like I was one of them. That I belonged with the three high school kids, standing with them and throwing rocks and sticks at the fat boy crying in the stream.
Bandit trotted over to Fat Bobby and pressed close against the kid’s leg. My dog looked back at me from that distance, and I saw something like condemnation in his wolfish features. Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe I was projecting my thoughts irrationally onto an animal. But that look from my dog—my friend, my brother—made me feel even shittier.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and now it was me with my hands in my pockets, head down, not meeting Bobby’s eyes. Kicking idly at a pebble on the ground.
Meekly, I looked up, saw Fat Bobby nod. There was a glimmer in one eye that may have been a tear, or perhaps just the reflected daylight.
“Come on,” I said, and started walking again.
I clapped him on the shoulder as I passed by, he fell in beside me, and I knew then that for better or worse we were friends.
* * *
“Your dad sounds pretty cool,” Fat Bobby said when we reached the top of the hill. The road overlooked the woods to the west, and to the north the highway led into town.
“Yeah. He isn’t bad at all.”
“I wish my dad were like him.”
“Your dad can’t be all that bad,” I said, but I remembered the fat kid in his underwear crying in the stream, doing nothing as three other guys assaulted him, and that in itself spoke volumes. That a dad would raise a son like that said more than I needed to know about the man.
I knew my lie for what it was as soon as I said it, and the silence that followed told me Bobby did as well. I turned, cursing myself for not knowing when to shut up.
I looked back over the forest we’d just left.
Remembering the light that had caught my attention in the first place, I scanned the woods for it. Nothing. As before, all the trees seemed one endless growth, no one distinguishable from the rest. Could it have just been the stream water, catching the sunlight in a million little diamond pinpoints?
I didn’t think so. The reflected light had seemed farther out than where I placed myself to have stopped near the stream.
I wanted to ask Fat Bobby about it, turned to him to do so, and saw a shadow of the earlier sadness and hurt still on his face. A better idea came to me. One that made me feel less shitty as a person and a friend.
“You like comics?” I asked.
Fat Bobby looked at me like I’d spoken some alien language.
“I’ve never really read them.”
“My dad runs a bookstore,” I said. “Come on, I’ll show you some things.”
Down the hill, north, we started out, the world stretched out before us in shades of bleached desert-white and earthen browns. Walking along the highway, a dog and two boys, friends, taking the road to where it took us.
1.
Dad was making his rounds about the store when we pushed through the glass doors. Bandit walked into the store with us, and some old lady with thick makeup like cake batter gave me a dirty look. I looked right back at her and said: “Service dog, ma’am. I’m borderline retarded.” She harrumphed and walked away, and I felt proud of myself.
Dad saw us and walked over, gave me a hug. I liked his hugs and never felt embarrassed when he gave me one in public. They were manly hugs, like ballplayers or boxers showing their respect after a long game or twelve rounds of exchanging punches.
He gave Bandit a glance, looked towards me like he was about to say something, and then he noticed Fat Bobby. Dad saw the cut on his forehead almost scabbed over and dry with some help from the summer sun, and turned to me.
“What happened?” he asked.
It was like he had some sort of radar that sounded when something had happened that needed to be told. He called it his Bullshit Detector, and it was backed by a lifetime warranty with an Ass Whooping Clause. For emphasis, he held up his hand and pointed at my butt whenever he said this. My dad never actually hit me when he said this, but the intention was clear: be honest with him or pay the consequences. The consequences were usually his disappointment and displeasure and that was always enough for me. A stern, disapproving look from him and I felt like a worm caught in the sights of a bird.
So I told him what happened and, as I did, he walked us back to his office, motioned us both to sit in the swivel chairs in front of the desk. Pulling out a first aid kit from a file drawer, Dad put some disinfectant on Fat Bobby’s cut and two Band Aids in the shape of an X on his forehead.
The office door open, I had a view of the adjacent break room and an employee, a girl about my sister’s age, eating her lunch there at a table. She was tall, thin, and her brown hair hung in spirals like little galaxies. Her dress, a flower print affair, clung to her like a second skin, and then there was her skin itself, golden and tanned like she took precise measurements to get it that way. Just so much sun; just the right amount of lotion; a dollop of genetic luck or God’s favor; and it equaled something I wanted to run my hands over.
She saw me looking and smiled warmly.
I smiled back, but quickly broke eye contact.
“Pay attention, Joey,” Dad said, bringing me back from where I wanted to be, to the real world and the situation at hand, which was far less appealing for my young boy’s brain.
“Yes, sir,” I said, turning the swivel chair so it faced him.
“I think we ought to call the police,” he said. “Throwing rocks isn’t fun and games. Those boys could have really hurt you.”
He said this last while looking at Fat Bobby, but I knew he included me in that equation also.
“I can take care of myself, Dad,” I said, a little louder than necessary for the benefit of the girl in the room behind me. “Plus Bandit was with me,” I added and leaned over to pet my dog, saw he wasn’t there, spun the swivel chair some more, saw he was out in the break room with the girl.
He had his head in her lap, gazing lovingly up at her as she shook his head from side to side, massaged his ears, and cooed at him.