The Jacket

A story about the weirdness of teen-aged boys.

It was the jacket of midnight dreams and train tracks, of wild grapes in the alley and monkey ball battles on the black top. It was denim, frayed at the cuffs and elbows; it conjured secret pacts and a life far from this town. It had danced in the park at noon and at dawn; it had grown to you like another, more daring, more brilliant, skin. Its blue was covered in a thousand wishes and twice as many fears. It shone starry-eyed in Dead Man’s Tunnel to light your way to the quarry in the dark and it saw you through fists and anger, laughter in the attic, the occasional tear when no one was looking. It opened the world and gave it to you, smiling. And it was in the trash can.

“Stop wearing that rag,” Mom said. “You look like a reprobate.” That was the word used by the family to signify a bum, a juvenile delinquent, a hobo, a future inmate, a person of seedy reputation. That wouldn’t do for a family that had dragged itself from the coal mines and into a semi-respectable lower-middle-income existence.

“Damn it,” my brother said, dragging the jacket out of the can. “I need this.” He was seventeen, the year that most things happen. “I’m going out later.”

“Keep your butt in this house,” Mom said. But she knew and he knew that when she left for work at three, he would be out the door until well past when she got home at midnight. It was summer. That meant no rules and nothing to bind you. No homework, no nuns screaming in your face, no hauling books and pencils, no clapping erasers.

“Okay,” he said, shaking out the jacket. It was two o’clock. He smiled broadly at her, clutching the jacket close to him, long 1970s brown hair hanging in his face. He strolled past her and thumped up the stairs to his attic bedroom.

“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” my Uncle shouted. He was schizophrenic and lived with us. His commentary usually consisted of Bible verses and World War II song lyrics. He stubbed out his Pall Mall in the ashtray. Mom sighed and went up to her room to change to her nurse’s uniform.

***

Moonface was grounded, so he wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere. I knew he would, though, because I had heard my brother talking about it on the phone.

“Three-oh-five,” he had said. Mom would be gone by then, off to work at the old people home.

“Three-oh-five,” I said. My uncle was still at the dining room table, chain smoking.

“Deuteronomy,” he said.

“Genesis,” I replied, and went out the front door.

The side of the front porch was elevated and if you looked down you could see the cobblestone walkway in between our house and Moonface’s house. But I looked up.

My brother’s attic window faced Moonface’s house. I heard the window slide open and could see the opposite window was already open.

Then he put the board out. It was wider than it was thick and was hard to maneuver. The board dipped down, and I could hear a shit from my brother’s window.

Moonface stuck his big blonde head out of his own window.

“Don’t drop it, man,” he yelled.

“Fucker,” came my brother’s reply. The board half disappeared back into the window, then came poking back out.

“Get a decent grip,” Moonface instructed. If we had lived in the suburbs this operation wouldn’t be possible, but here, in the middle of town, with houses so close together, well. It was the best solution.

When the board got close enough Moonface grabbed it and pulled the end into his window.

“Got it,” he said. Then Moonface himself appeared, on his hands and knees, on the board, slowly crawling across. I didn’t dare make a sound; I didn’t want to be the cause of Moonface’s demise, not that he was a good guy or anything. His brother grew pot and I knew for a fact that they had broken into every house on our street at least once. They had even messed up Mrs. Williams’ motorized chair that went up and down her stairs by riding it, drunkenly, up and down her stairs one night, all night, up and down, until it busted.

He was halfway across.

“Don’t fall, asshole,” my brother said. He was giggling his high-pitched, highly amused giggle.

Moonface stopped and gave him a look. Then he continued crawling.

Once he had made it in, the board disappeared back into my brother’s room. I knew that he hid it under the bed, so they were probably stowing it away for another day’s escape. I went back inside.

They came thundering down two sets of stairs.

“Where are you guys going?”

“Nowhere,” Moonface said.

“Just around. Be back later,” my brother said. He was wearing the jacket.

They cut through the kitchen and rumbled down the basement stairs to make a more discreet escape. Moonface’s dad was not to be tampered with. He was tall and skinny and had greasy black hair and he liked these pills that my brother called white crosses, which made him jumpy and agitated. And mean.

“Feed Russo,” my brother called up the stairs. Then the cellar door opened and shut.

I made my uncle a sandwich and coffee, to which he exclaimed: buy bonds, and I turned the radio on for him to the religious channel.

Then I went down into the cellar.

I had decided that I would go. I would follow them and see just what it was they were doing. I knew they would probably go to the park, maybe meet some other kids, then go off and do whatever it was they did. I was only four years younger; there was no reason that I couldn’t get up to devilment, too.

I went out the door and down through the yard, which was green with early summer and flanked on both sides by flowers my aunt had planted before she died. A lot of people had died in our house. My Grandpap, at the foot of the stairs, my other uncle, at the dining room table, my cousin, in a bizarre bungee-jumping accident from the third floor roof.

I cut right at the alley and crossed Main St., and went up the hill to the park. They would probably be at Pizza Rock–a low, wide slab set into the ground that was a gathering place for reprobates of all sorts. It formed a convenient table for al fresco pizza eating.

Because the park was hilly, I had a selection of hiding spots. Pizza Rock was on a small rise, so I could just duck down behind a gravestone or memorial marker. The park had been the town’s first cemetery and scattered stones remained from the late 1700s and 1800s. It was also the source of my brother’s nickname, Tombstone, from repeatedly ramming himself into a stone one drunken night.

In addition to my brother and Moonface, I could see Weasel, Lumpy, and Lump of Alaska. Lump of Alaska was a lump, but he needed a designation to distinguish him from Lumpy. Because he had gone awol when his number came up and ran away to Alaska, that’s what he became.

They sat around Pizza Rock and smoked cigarettes, which was boring. Then another kid came up. His name was Geezer because he was really thin and had a receding hairline. They all talked for a while, smoking. Then they got up.

They headed towards the train tracks, so I knew it was going to be one of two places. Left would take them towards the train station and the pedestrian tunnels that kids liked to hang out in. Right would take them to the quarry lake and the nookie-tookie; farther on was Dead Man’s Tunnel.

I hoped it wasn’t Dead Man’s Tunnel. It was utterly dark and long. But it was a cut-through to the public swimming pool, so a lot of kids used it. The floor of it was unpaved, so it was a gamble; you could easily step on a shard of glass from one of the many broken bottles that littered it. Even in the daytime it was dark. Even on a hot day it was chilling. I didn’t want to go in there. I had only been through it with a bunch of kids, egging each other on, towels slung over shoulders for the pool, usually breaking into a run about halfway through.

But it turned out that they went up by the quarry lake. There was still a quarry of sorts, piles of rock and gravel; no one ever seemed to work there. The lake itself was wide and so deep that it had earned the reputation of being bottomless. A kid had drowned in there, the rumor was, and he was still sinking, forever sinking downward alone in the icy cold and dark.

I was following along at a distance, slinking around behind the bushes and trees that flanked the railroad tracks, letting them be little pinpricks in the distance, as I had a good idea where they were headed. They stopped by the lake and spent a little time throwing rocks in until one of them got the idea to roll a boulder down into it. This was a little more interesting. Six guys trying to wrangle a boulder over to the side of the hill. They were cussing a lot, punching each other, doing basic boy things. Then once it was at the edge, my brother, Weasel, and Lumpy crouched down and pushed until the beastly rock rolled over the edge. A satisfying splash followed and they all cheered.

I felt like I was in a documentary, like Wild Kingdom. I was Marlon Perkins, narrating the daily life of teenaged boys and their rituals. Observe now this pack of feral boys, demonstrating to only themselves feats of daring and strength. Why this is done is a mystery. Researchers know that rocks of great size play an important part in their coming of age rituals; all who participate are lauded and accepted as members of the fellowship, as trusted companions who will stay together until they reach full adulthood.

After their success, the group moved on. There was a scattering of old industrial buildings around the quarry, all half-dilapidated and falling in on themselves. Windows busted out, bricks everywhere, graffiti everywhere. They headed to a building decorated with a large smiley face and Lump was here spray-painted on the side. The second floor was completely gone and most of the first floor was too. It was an open air ruin and inside lay the nookie-tookie.

The nookie-tookie was not a place you should go. My brother had warned me many times to stay away from it. Too many bad things happened there. Part of the problem was an old hand-crank elevator that remained from the building’s former productive days. It went from the first floor down into the basement. But there were no stairs leading back up. You could be stuck in the nookie-tookie with no way out, just like the quarry lake–forever in the dark, alone with the rubble and mildew.

They went in. I didn’t dare get too close, but I could hear them shouting and daring each other on. I think they sent a couple people down, because I could hear some guys yelling to be pulled back up. Total darkness, worse than the pedestrian tunnels or Dead Man’s Tunnel. Wow. Was this another boy-ritual? Another primitive bonding ceremony?

Then someone screamed, way too high-pitched to be a hey, let’s have fun scream. The other guys were laughing and shouting: Geezer’s in the nookie-tookie! Ha, ha, ha, fucker! Nookie-tookie for you!

Send it back down! Send it down! Geezer went on.

You scared, someone taunted.

Come on you assholes! Let me out!

Geezer’s gonna cry, someone yelled, and they all laughed.

Fuck you guys, come on!!

But they just kept on laughing.

Now, I am not one for cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Maybe it was just a joke. But Geezer sounded scared out of his mind. Who wouldn’t be? If they left, no one would know he was down there in the dark. He had the sad misfortune of being the weak link, the one with the weird hair and skinny-ass frame. So, into the nookie-tookie with him. Boy thing. They would let him out.

I was wrong.

They all came strolling out of the building in one massive laughing gaggle. I felt my mouth involuntarily drop open; they were gonna leave him down there. They were gonna leave poor Geezer to the spiders and thousand-leggers and whatever else was crawling around in the dark. He was still screaming.

They were walking toward my hiding spot behind a large mulberry tree. I rotated around it as they got near, hoping to remain hidden, and watched them head back to the quarry lake. Geezer was still screaming.

I crept behind them, as close as I safely thought I could, then took up residence near the top of a pile of gravel, my head just poking up. They were gonna swim. Lump of Alaska was already down to his tighty-whiteys and had jumped in. Then they all stripped down to their undies and went in the water, splashing and hooting. You really couldn’t stand in the water; it was too deep. The best you could do was continue swimming around or tread water. Once you got to the side, there were saplings you could grab onto to pull yourself out, then you had to climb back up.

I walked over to where they had dumped their clothes. I grabbed my brother’s jacket and stuffed some good-sized rocks in it, tying it closed with the denim arms. Then I went over to the lakeside, carrying it. They didn’t see me at first, but eventually Moonface noticed me and swam over to my brother, smacking him in the arm until he looked.

I held the jacket over the edge.

“Let him out,” I said.

They were all treading water now, looking up at me.

“Em, don’t,” my brother shouted.

I stretched my arms out over the water as far as I dared, the jacket like a box of dynamite.

“Let Geezer out,” I repeated.

“Damn,” Lumpy said solemnly.

“Hardcore,” Moonface agreed.

“Goddamnit, Em, don’t,” my brother repeated.

I felt like I was going to cry, but I willed myself to not cry. I shook the jacket in the air above the lake, feeling the weight of the rocks, knowing it would be forever gone, like the drowned boy, like Geezer might be.

“Let him OUT of the NOOKIE-TOOKIE,” I screamed.

They all shot out swimming to different egress points of the lake, dragging themselves up, scrambling to their clothes. Not laughing anymore.

“We were gonna let him out,” my brother began.

“Now,” I pronounced.

“Gimme my jacket,” he said.

“No, not until after.”

I followed them back to the ruined building and actually went inside with them. It was dusty and filled with piles of brick and the garbage of partying teens. The mechanism was a wheel. Geezer, who had apparently given up, heard the commotion and started shouting again.

My brother and Moonface went over to the wheel and Lump of Alaska told him to get ready to get in. They turned the wheel, lowering the cab.

“For real?” Geezer said in amazement. “You guys, goddamnit, I got a hundred spider bites; something crawled over my foot; I think there’s bats down here,” he babbled. “Let me out!”

When the cab rose up and Geezer jumped off the platform, he was pale as white bread and mayo.

“We were just fuckin’ around,” Lumpy said.

“Yeah, man,” my brother continued, “we were gonna come get you.”

Geezer looked at them like someone had just shot his dog. Then he looked at me.

I undid the arms of the jacket and dumped the rocks out.

“You guys are all kinda jerks,” I said, throwing the jacket to my brother.

They were all looking at the ground, not willing to meet my eyes.

“Fuck,” Geezer said. “Badass tiny girl.”

“Reprobates,” I said, then I turned around and went home.