Dark Places(20)

He wanted to be a useful man, but he wasn’t sure how to make that happen, and it scared him shitless. His dad had come back to live on the farm for a few months this summer, and Ben had been hopeful, figuring the guy would teach him something after all this time, bother to be a father. Instead, Runner just did all the mechanical stuff himself, didn’t even invite Ben to watch. Made it clear, in fact, that Ben should stay out of his way. He could tell Runner thought he was a pussy: whenever his mom talked about needing to fix something, Runner would say, “that’s men’s work,” and shoot a smile at Ben, daring Ben to agree. He couldn’t ask Runner to show him shit.

Also, he had no money. Correction, he had $4.30 in his pocket, but that was it for him, for this week. His family had no money saved. They had a bank account that was always just short of empty—he’d seen a statement once where the balance was literally $1.10, so at one point his entire family had less in the bank than what he was carrying in his coat right now. His mom couldn’t run the farm right—somehow she was screwing it up. She’d take a load of wheat over to the elevator in a borrowed truck and get nothing—less than what it cost to grow it—and whatever money she did get, she owed. The wolves are at the door, his mom always said, and when he was younger, he pictured her leaning out the back door, throwing crisp green cash at a pack of hounds, them snapping it up like it was meat. It was never enough.

Was anyone going to take the farm away at some point? Shouldn’t someone? The best thing might be to get rid of the farm, start all over fresh, not tied to this big, dead, living thing. But it was his mom’s parents’ place, and she was sentimental. It was pretty selfish, when you thought about it. Ben worked all week on the farm, and then went back to the school on weekends to work his crap janitor’s job. (School and farm and farm and school, that’s all his life was before Diondra. Now he had a nice triangle of places to go: school and farm and Diondra’s big house on the edge of town.) He fed cattle and hauled manure at home, and pretty much did the same at school, cleaning locker rooms and mopping the cafeteria, wiping up other kids’ shit. And still he was expected to turn over half his paycheck to his mom. Families share. Yeah? Well, parents take care of their children, how about that one? How about not squirting out three more kids when you could barely afford the first one?

The bike clattered along, Ben waiting for the whole thing to go to pieces like some comedy routine, some cartoon where he ended up peddling on just a seat and a wheel. He hated that he had to bike places like Opie going to the fishing hole. He hated that he couldn’t drive. Nothing sadder than a boy just short of sixteen, Trey would say, shaking his head and blowing smoke toward him. He said this every time Ben showed up to Diondra’s on his bike. Trey was mostly cool, but he was the kind of guy who always had to get a jab in at another guy. Trey was nineteen, with long hair, black and dull like week-old tar, Diondra’s step-cousin or something weird like that, great-uncle or family friend or stepson of a family friend. He either changed his story a few times, or Ben wasn’t paying close enough attention. Which was entirely possible, since whenever he was around Trey, Ben immediately tensed up, got way conscious of his body. Why was he standing with his legs at that angle? What should he do with his hands? On his waist or in his pockets?

Either way felt weird. Either way would lead to jokes. Trey was the kind of guy that would look for something just slightly but truly wrong about you that you didn’t even notice and point it out to the whole room. Nice highwaters was the first thing Trey ever said to him. Ben was wearing jeans that were maybe, possibly, half an inch too short. Maybe an inch. Nice highwaters. Diondra had screeched at that. Ben had waited for her to stop laughing, and Trey to start talking again. He’d waited ten minutes, saying nothing, just trying to sit at an angle where his socks wouldn’t peek out too much. Then he’d retreated to the bathroom, unlooped his belt a notch, pulled the jeans down near his hips. When he came back to the room—Diondra’s downstairs rec room, with blue carpet and beanbags everywhere like mushrooms—the second thing Trey ever said to him was, “Your belt’s down to your dick now, man. Ain’t foolin’ no one.”

Ben rattled down the trail in the cold shade of winter, more flakes of snow floating in the air like dust motes. Even when he turned sixteen, he wouldn’t have a car. His mom had a Cavalier that she bought at an auction; it had once been a rental car. They couldn’t afford a second one, she’d already told Ben that. They’d have to share, which immediately made Ben not want to use it at all. He already pictured trying to pick up Diondra in a car that smelled of hundreds of other people, a car that smelled completely used—old french fries and other people’s sex stains—and on top of that, a car that was now cluttered with girls’ schoolbooks and yarn dolls and plastic bracelets. That wouldn’t work. Diondra said he could drive her car (she was seventeen, another problem, because wasn’t that sort of embarrassing to be two grades below your girlfriend?). But that was a much better vision: the two of them in her red CRX, with its jacked-up rear end, Diondra’s menthol cigarettes filling the car with perfumey smoke, Slayer blasting. Yeah, much better.