FRED AND THE BOY

“Now you’re going to learn how to be a man!”

            “You said that yesterday.”

            “Well did you?”

            “No.”

            “So pay more attention this time. Today, you’re going to learn how to be a man.”  Always says that when he wants me to do something for him. Pretend to teach me something and maybe he is, but really, the cock is too drunk to do it himself. Fred pulling off to the side of the road. Agua Fria. Last real Santa Fe road, he tells me.  Open our doors, get out and I’m in such a hurry to get into the driver’s seat I crash into him when we meet at the hood of his Jeep. Climb into the cockpit and I’m tearing off down the road with no time to think about being fourteen and not knowing how to drive or shoot this rifle sliding about the back seat.

            “Take a right here.” Fred weezes, taking another drag from his fag. He calls them fags because he’s spent the last two decades in England. I call him a fag for the same reason.

            “I remember.”  Not really, but we did drive out here yesterday only we forgot the rifle. We stood out there drinking for a while and set up a row of bottles on top of a refrigerator. When we couldn’t find the rifle we just threw rocks at the bottles. Fred got really mad about it, but the boy had a good time.

            “You bring the rifle?”

            “You bring the bullets?”

            “You bring your asshole?”

            “Yes and it sounds like this.” Trying to fart, but we just ate juevos rancheros and that chile’s dying to find a way out like the rest of us.

            “Careful!” Tighten the asshole up, Fred grabs the wheel and steers me out of the path of a cactus the size of man’s greatest failure. “Speed up a little. You have to find the right speed for these washboards. Too slow and you’ll ruin the suspension. Too fast and you’ll be in the arroyo. But if you get it just right, your wheels will glide along the top of the ridges and everything will be smooth.” Take it up to about forty and it feels insane to go this fast on a dirt road but the ride is a lot smoother. As long as nothing new comes along we’ll be fine, and that’s how I feel these days in regards to just about everything.

            “Take a left here.”

            “But there’s nothing there.”

            “Exactly. We want to be as far away from everything and everyone as we can be. So get rid of all the bullshit you ever learned from your teachers, your parents, your television and your own rotten little brain. This world did a real mindfuck on you, John. Consider this therapy.”

            “Where we’re going… we don’t need roads.” I quote a movie from childhood and feel instantly ashamed that I have nothing of my own to think or say.

            “You’ll get it. Don’t worry you’ll get it. Slow down so we can put it in four wheel.” I slow down and throw it in neutral then engage the four wheel drive and put the jeep back in gear. Seen the weezing beast do that a dozen times and feeling so good to do it on my own, I don’t ever want to leave this truck again. Fred opens another Modelo with his lighter and puts it in the cup holder. Take a few sips and spill some down my neck. Fred smiles.

            “Therapy…” The first honest thing I’ve said all summer.

            We drive up and down the hills into the feared and forgotten. Fred, the old wounded bear who would not be shot down and mounted over the hunter’s hearth. Doomed hero spilling blood and growing stronger, madder, meaner with every blow. Fred teaches me not to high center and to always keep my hands on the wheel even when I want to grab onto something else and scream. Romping down into a valley now and stop at a new civilization. Pretty as emphysema and wouldn’t that look nice framed in a museum. Two rusted out cars, a few refrigerators, an old couch that smells like wet dogs and I’m sure I’ve just driven into Fred’s own brain. Stepping out into the sun, everything screaming white hot and burning the nostril hairs. The air dries the beer onto my face and neck, making a sticky clear mask. Fred tosses me a pair of aviator glasses and pees on his own tire.

            “Better me than them. Grab the rifle and ammo out of the backseat.”

            “You grab it.” I’m the kid that steps on nails to see how sharp they are. Sticks his fingers in fans to feel how fast they go. The kid that would shoot himself to know that guns are dangerous.

            “Don’t be a pussy. It’s not loaded.”

            “You don’t know that.”

            “What are the odds that you would slip and take a bullet out of the box, load it into the chamber and pull the trigger before you fall.”

            “Pretty good.” Fred turns around and whips a stream of urine at my feet. I jump back and watch the sand gobble up the droplets. This hot evil ground. Swallow me too if I don’t get a move on.

            “Well…” Don’t want to be peed on so I grab the rifle and ammo from the car and slam them on the hood. “Hey, watch the Jesus! I just got that done.” Last week he drove up to Espanola and had Jesus’ resurrection airbrushed across the hood. Said he wanted Chicanos to know he was one of the good ones and he wasn’t here to change anything. I think he did it because he likes tacky sentimental religious crap. Fred closing up shop and walking over to the front of the car wiping hands across jeans. Old man taking the gun out of its sheath and looking in the chamber. Don’t know anything about guns but I can tell he has no idea what he’s doing. Probably saw someone else hold a rifle like that and thought he should do the same. Roll your cigarettes up in the sleeve and lean against something to smoke and you will be someone. Judging by the wood you can tell it was made in the seventies or earlier, but that bolt-action model was definitely invented right around World War I. John knowing everything from a book. John knowing nothing at all.

            “We need to drink some more beers so we’ll have something to shoot.”

            “Sounds counterproductive.”

            “You wanna walk home?” Grab another six-pack out of the truck and hand him two beers. Fred opens one and hands me the other back. “You have to open your own beers out here.” Giant hands dead to all pain, handing me the lighter and it looks so small when he holds it I think he’s God. Stare at the beer and the lighter for a while.

            “Take the beer in your left hand and grip up on the bottle neck. Now put the lighter under the cap and use the index finger of your left hand as a fulcrum.” 

            Put all one hundred thirty pounds into it expecting the cap to fly off with a loud “pop”, but the lighter snaps out from under the cap.

             “Try again.”

             I give it a few more tries. Fred laughing and showing off dark bleeding gums. I smell the death in your breath. Crotchety old man, you should be put away for teaching me this. No strength left and even less pride, I walk over to the Jeep and open the door. “Ping, ping, ping.” Keys still in the ignition and I know he hates that sound. Put the bottle in the bracket that the door latches onto and use it like a bottle opener. Cap flying off and I jerk it up to my face to swallow the foam, hitting my teeth against the glass, pretending to look tough.

            “I’m impressed.”  Fred winks behind dark aviators but light enough to see he’s blind from the beer and the women and the foreverness of his condition. Drink for a while, drinking more and more wishing I had just a sip of water but the old man won’t hear of it. Can’t prepare for everything, he’ll tell you. That’s why we forgot the rifle and had to throw rocks last time, I say. And I’m only fourteen but moments like this make me feel like I’ve done this before and maybe being a drunkard and shooting bottles off the tops of old cars has a little religion to it. Can’t help but think that this is exactly what Mother imagines we do when Fred and the Boy go out together and how when we come home we always tell her exactly what we did but we say it with such unbelievable sarcasm that she thinks we just went to the movies or a museum. Old man telling me not to smoke but if I’m going to than at least hold it the right way. Says you become invisible when you have no secrets to conceal and I’m too young to know he’s quoting Dylan, and thinking he’s full of it. When the drinking stops the last thing I want to do is hold that damn antique of a rifle.

            “Take these bottles and put them all over the place. You need to learn how to shoot at multiple targets.” Running across the sand with an arm full of empty Modelos. Put a few on this car, now that one and not forgetting the fridge. This crazy bastard is preparing me for the end of it all. Someday we’ll be held up on the camino, drunk and wired, picking off the looters or the army of the New World Order. And I wonder if this future will not come if I don’t think to plan for it and maybe I can just play guitar and complain about taxes and fame. What does my mother see in you, old man? And why am I not back in Virginia with my real dad who makes sense when he speaks and goes to work everyday. There’s a guilt that comes with being around Fred. A feeling of treason. Father will hang me when he hears of this. Out of breathe now, and my, everything takes so much more out of you when you drink in the sun.

            “This is how you load the cartridge. Put them in one at a time always facing this direction.” Hand full of thumbs and he shakes so much you’d think his molecules were speeding up so they could leave this world. Banging the clip on the stock of the gun and checking to make sure the bullets won’t jam. He sticks it in the bottom of the gun and holds it up in the air.

            “Release the bolt and flick it up like so. Pull it back. Now see how the bullet is in the chamber. Now push it up like this and lock it down. Now when you aim, you want to line this notch on the barrel in between these two notches. And that’s your site. Line it up with one of those bastards and pull the trigger.” Fred gives it a squeeze. “Kkkowwww.” Bottle exploding and I jump back a little as the report echoes back against the hills. Not afraid of the explosion or the speeding lead. It’s the bottle breaking that gets me. When I was nine or ten my best friend split my lip in two with a beer bottle. Had to hitchhike home from the park that day, one hand out to the road with a thumb and the other holding the face in place and when the plastic surgeon sewed my lip together I couldn’t smile for a month.

            “Now you try.” Grab the gun and really feel the weight of it for the first time. Flick the bolt up and pull it back. The shell jumps out and not expecting that at all. I want to put it down and sit in the car but I can’t. Not in front of Fred. Pull the bolt back a bit more and the next bullet pops up into the chamber. Ram the bolt forward and lock it down nice and snug, feeling that bullet waiting to kill something. This is a terrible thing. This should not be. This feeling, the premise of all war, wanting, craving to kill something, daring the horizon to move just an inch and bang bang, your dead. “Get one of those bastards in your sites. And when you’ve got him lined up take a breath in and hold it. Then squeeze one off on your exhale.” An excellent teacher and how creepy is that? Line up the sites on a bottle, aiming at the label, which is its heart. Take a breathe in and hold it till my head grows a little. Breath out and pull the trigger, which is much heavier than the boy was expecting. “Pow!” Hear the hill take it hard and a little dust smokes up from the hole.

            “That’s okay. Now try again. Feel how it aims just a bit to the left. She’s old and you’ve got to find her mark.” Old man doesn’t need to say it because I’m already snapping that bolt back and forward again. The shell jumps out and a new one comes in. Instant addiction. The counselors in school said I had that type of personality. I squeeze off the next shot, forgetting to breath and don’t even care about missing. Reload and this time I get good and ready. Drop down to one knee, find my sights and suck it in. Squeeze a little on the exhale and smash! Shards splashing all over that old car. Stand up and I’m so excited I don’t even notice the swelling of my shoulder. We go on like this for the rest of the afternoon, trading off clips, not saying much, because all we can think about is shooting the next round off. The box is empty and the boy is ready for something bigger like a bird or a dog, or a congressman. Get back in the Jeep and drive back to the world just a little faster than before. The boy still loving control of that great big gas guzzler but wishing he was back out there shooting those old cars to death, defending his life and addiction.