How extensive was the transformation? The rules and decor and entire vibe changing from house to house. In that other zip code, Daddy was a pipe-puffing teddy bear in a sweater vest, a throwback to a sitcom idea of genial paternity, peeling off wisdom like “You know, son, sometimes a body's got to stand up for himself” and “We all get bruised sometimes, but then we dust ourselves off and say, Golly, tomorrow is another day.” Mommy was always taking the bird out of the oven, she dolled herself up on Our Anniversary and they walked out arm in arm, they never missed a year. Everyone tucked in tight. The family ate together and communicated. And then Daddy lit out for this zip code, changed his face, and everything was reversed. One man, two houses. Two faces. Which house you lived in, kids, was the luck of the draw.
You might call this speculation dumb. Each house made the other a lie. None of it was real. I'm not so sure.
Randy and NP were in the street. They were bent over, looking at something on the ground. I yelled, “Yo!” They didn't respond. I walked up.
“Look at that,” NP said.
“What happened to it?” I asked. The robin was lying on the asphalt, but it didn't have the familiar tread-mark tattoo of most road-kill. It was tiny and still.
“Randy shot it,” NP said.
Randy grinned and held up the BB rifle to show it off. It looked real, but that was the point. If it looked real, you could pretend it was real, and if you had a real gun you could pretend to be someone else. The metal was sleek, inky black, the fake wood grain of the stock and forearm glossy in the sun. “I got it at Caldor,” he said.
We looked down at the robin again.
“It flew over and landed on the power pole and I just took the shot,” Randy said. “I've been practicing all day.”
“Is it dead?” I asked.
“I don't see any blood,” NP answered.
“Maybe it's just a concussion,” I said.
“You should stuff it and mount it,” NP said.
I thought, “That's uncool,” a judgment I'd picked up from the stoner crowd at my school, who had decided I was “okay” toward the end of the spring semester and let me hang out in their vicinity or at least linger unmolested as a prelude to a provisional adoption by their clan next fall. (They had a Weed for Nerds charity and a strong commitment to diversity.) I liked uncool because it meant there was a code that everyone agreed on. The rules didn't change—everything in the universe was either cool or uncool, no confusion. “That's uncool,” someone said, and “That is so uncool,” another affirmed, the voice of justice itself, nasal and uncomplicated.
Randy let NP take the rifle and NP held it in his hands, testing its weight. It looked solid and formidable. He aimed at invisible knuckleheads loitering at the dead end of the street: “Stick 'em up!” He pumped the stock three times, clack clack clack, and pulled the trigger. And again.
“It's empty, dummy,” Randy said.
We headed into his house to get some more “ammo.” Randy lived at the end of the street in a long green ranch house with fading orange trim. I'd never been inside. He opened the screen door and yelled, “Mom, I'm inside with my friends!,” and the sound of a TV disappeared as a door closed with a thud. I didn't know much about Randy's home life, but I knew his father wasn't in the picture.
There were fathers who worked in the city during the week and there were fathers who were a variety of gone. I knew Randy's father came out one weekend every other summer because I'd hear my parents talk about it. “Stanley's out this weekend with his young girlfriend/expensive car/speedboat,” whatever prop he was riding that year. I assumed he didn't stay on Hillside.
The blinds were tilted open, sending planes of light to charge slow-dancing motes of hair and dead skin. NP and I sat on the plastic-covered furniture while Randy went into his room. I smelled dog, and remembered a recent conversation with Randy about his dog, Tiger, a cocker spaniel who had choked on a piece of rope and died two years ago. I noticed some white fur trapped underneath the plastic on the upholstery and experienced a doctor's-office wave of nervousness.
“Can we sit down here?” I asked.
“What do you think the plastic's for?” NP said.
Randy returned and led us out through the kitchen into the backyard. Brown leaves drifted in tiny dirty pools in the butts of chairs. Behind the house was woods, allowing him to convert the patio into a firing range. He'd dragged the barbecue grill to the edge of the trees—I saw a line of ashes in a trail—and around its three feet lay cans and cups riddled with tiny holes. Randy set up a Six Million Dollar Man action figure on the grill's lid. It took a few tries to get him to stand up straight. We'd outgrown tying army men to bottle rockets, failure itself despite our delusions of NASA-like competence, so this was a logical extension of action-figure abuse.
“Lemme get a shot,” NP begged.
“I go first,” Randy told him, with the imperious tone he'd mastered during his stint as the Kid with the Car.
Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, who had been rebuilt at great expense with taxpayers' money, stood on the red dome, his bionic hands in eternal search of necks to throttle. Randy took aim. Steve Austin stared impassively, his extensive time on the operating table having granted him a stoic's quiet grace. It took five shots, Randy pumping and clacking the stock with increasing fury as we observed his shitty marksmanship. Steve Austin tumbled off the lid and lay on his side, his pose undisturbed in the dirt. Didn't even blink. They really knew how to make an action figure back then.
“I want to get the optional scope for greater accuracy” Randy explained, “but that costs more money.”
“Lemme try that shit now,” NP said.
I left soon after. I threw out a “You guys want to head to East Hampton to buy records?” but no one bit. I thought we were past playing with guns. I walked around the side of the house and when I got back into the street the bird was gone.
That was the first gun. The next gun was Bobby's. This one was a pistol, a replica of a 9mm. We were in his room. Bobby had invited me to play Lode Runner on his Apple II+, but when we got up there, he dug under his mattress and pulled out the BB pistol.
I jerked my head toward the open door. “What about your grandpa?”
He pointed to his alarm clock. It was 7:35 PM. Which meant his grandfather had been asleep for five minutes. Bobby's parents returned on weekends, like ours, but in his case he was not completely unsupervised. His grandparents came out for the entire summer to make sure he got fed. But after 7:30, Bobby crawled over the wall.
His grandparents were friends of the first generation, but they'd never bought a house during the gold rush. They stayed with pals on weekends, and then Bobby's parents started renting a house in the '70s, up the street from our old house on Hempstead, which is how he became such an integral part of our crew. His family had built the house up in Ninevah two years ago, an imposing gray beach house overlooking the bay from on high. I remember playing Alien Prison Cell in the cement foundation when the construction workers were off slacking. Splintery and vertigo-inducing stairs led down the dune to the water. It was a big place—most of the first-wave houses were single-story—with a guest room downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs.
Bobby's grandparents stayed on the first floor, so we had a state-of-the-art slipper-on-stairs warning system in case his grandfather, against all odds, was still puttering around past 7:30. In the great local tradition, his grandmother stayed in her room at all hours, occasionally summoning Bobby in for conferences from which he'd emerge with a five-or ten-dollar bill for “treats.” I don't think I saw her that whole summer. His grandfather was a real gentle guy, always kind to our mangy bunch when we came over. Gentle in that way that said he'd seen a lot of racist shit in his life and was glad that things had turned out better for his children and grandchildren. That cool old breed. His daughter had married another Brooklynite—not a Sag guy, although he grew up with Sag kids in the off-season and knew the myth—and now they had finally
arrived. He had a right to be proud. And a right to get some damn sleep at the first hints of twilight.
“Me and NP went with Randy to Caldor and got one,” Bobby said. “He got the silver one, but I wanted the black one. It's the joint, right?” Of course Randy was the facilitator. Seeing Randy fondle his rifle, given its potential, had the paradoxical effect of making him look like a monstrously overgrown baby. He might as well have been sucking his thumb. Bobby's real-lookin' gun allowed him to indulge his hard-rock fantasies and bury his deep prep-school weakness. Hide his grandfather's soft features in the scowl of a thug, the thug of his inverted Westchester fantasies. A kind of blackface.
“Greg Davis's cousin has a gun like this,” Bobby said, squinting down the pistol's sight. “I saw it once at his house. You know what he's into, right?”
“No, what?”
“You know, some hard-core shit. He was in jail.” He held it out. “Do you want to hold it?”
“No, that's all right.”
“What are you, a pussy?”
I shrugged.
“Me and Reggie were shooting stuff over at the Creek today,” Bobby said. “He has good aim. He should be a sniper in the Army Corps.”
I'd seen Reggie before he went off to Burger King, asked him what he'd been up to. “Nothing.”
“Let me see that,” I said. It was heavier than it looked. Its insides dense with cause and effect. I curled my finger around the trigger. Okay. Got the gist. I pretended to study it for a few more moments and gave it back to Bobby.
“I'm going to bring this shit to school,” Bobby said. He put his crazy face on. “Stick up some pink motherfuckers. Bla-blam!”
Which was bullshit. Hunting preppies—the Deadliest Game of All—would cut into his daily vigil outside the college counselor's office. Despite his recent theatrics. This BB-gun shit was making people act like dummies.
To wit: he pointed it at me. “Hands in the air!”
I shielded my eyes with my hand. “Get that shit outta my face!”
He laughed. “Hot oil! Hot oil!” he said, rolling his eyes manically.
“Shoot my eye out,” I said. Reggie had started saying “Hot oil! Hot oil!” whenever I bossed him around or said something lame. After the twentieth time, I asked him why he kept saying that, and he said there was a semi-retarded guy who worked at Burger King through a special program, and he always got agitated when he walked by the fryers, squealing “Hot oil! Hot oil!” to remind himself.
“Don't worry. I got the safety on,” Bobby said, pulling the trigger. The BB shot out, hit the wall, ricocheted into his computer monitor, bounced against the window, and disappeared under his bed. “Sorry, man! Sorry, sorry!” he yelped. Downstairs, one might conjecture, grandpa stirred in his sleep.
At least it was a plastic BB. Randy had copper BBs and Bobby had plastic BBs at that point. The plastic ones didn't hurt that much. The copper ones could do some real damage, though, as I saw the next week when I found myself out on “target practice.” We were on our way to Bridgehampton to walk around. Me, Randy driving, Clive, and NP Then Randy pulled into the parking lot of Mashashimuet Park.
“I thought we were going to Bridgehampton,” I said.
“After we go shooting,” Randy said. He slipped the car keys into his pocket.
We walked into the trails behind the park. NP carried a moldy cardboard box. When I asked him what was inside he said, “That would be telling.” I followed behind Randy and NP, and ahead of Clive, according to a beloved survivor scenario from the old days. The trails, you see, were maintained by the wheels of pickups, motorbikes, and ATVs, which ground down foolhardy weeds, churned up the dirt, and snapped off the branches of the sad oaks and sticker bushes to the side. Where the trails opened into small clearings, we discovered proof of older kid/redneck presence—old beer cans and cigarette butts, sure, but also shotgun shells. The woods between towns were the domain of good old boys and their good-old-boy inclinations. Out of reach of the law, out of earshot, they could get down to the business of shootin' things. We never in all our summers came across another soul out there, but such a thing was just a matter of time, surely. Walk toward the rear of the pack but ahead of the last guy, and you had insulating bodies to protect you in case of ambush.
Or so my young self theorized. Today we were armed.
Randy had the spot all picked out. The abandoned Karmann Ghia. It made sense. We'd tried to make a plaything of it many a boredom-crazed afternoon, but it was too rusted to approach and properly incorporate into high jinks beyond throwing rocks through the dwindling windows. We were a dutiful and tetanus-phobic group, lockjaw being the most sinister villain we could imagine. “His face twisted into a grimace of horror.” But not anymore. The guns gave us the distance to hasten the car's ruin.
Whenever you saw the red Karmann Ghia, that debased victim of the Rust Gods, some other kids had ripped off another piece in the interim. The hubcaps, the mirrors. One day the windshield wipers were stuck out like antennae, and no one touched them because the effect was cool, satisfying adolescent aesthetics of destruction. Another summer we ventured out and the upholstery hung out of the driver's window like a ghastly tongue. Kids all over like to mutilate it. Since this is a What Happened tale, I wonder how the car got there, who owned it. Abandoned by joyriders, left to die by a summering specimen who couldn't keep up the payments. Had I seen them just the day before, these faceless elders, sailing through the crosswalk in their new fab ride even though I had the right of way, had I served them ice cream at Jonni Waffle for no tip, did they throw a Hush! our way when we got too loud at Conca D'Oro? We didn't know each other but we had this hidden link. We were related by rust.
Randy's first attempts were unspectacular. But as his aim improved and he figured out the key pressure points, a BB disintegrated a nice section of the car's weakened frame instead of zipping straight through and leaving a tiny fingertip-sized hole you had to get up close to see. “You see how I pump it?” Randy asked rhetorically. “The more you pump it, the faster the FPS.” Feet per second, I guessed, and later confirmed when I sat on some ketchup-stained rifle literature in the backseat of Randy's car. “Low FPS is good if you just want to scare a deer or another critter off your property. Higher FPS is when you really want to send a message.” Yee-haw!
NP and Clive took turns with NP's pistol—Randy clung tight to his baby today—and while it was diverting for a while, I started to wonder if we had enough time to drive to Bridgehampton and back before my shift.
“We just got here, dag,” NP said.
“I'm not ready to go,” Randy said as he reloaded his rifle. His car, his keys.
Clive had taken a few shots. He was the only sensible one among us, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. “Why don't you go and try it?” he asked me. Co-opt the complainer.
I thought about Reggie and Bobby taking potshots at squirrels and dead horseshoe crabs. I took NP's gun. Identical to Bobby's, except in silver. Clive offered the carton of BBs to me. In their small blue box, the copperheads turned molten in the sun. NP said, “Let's break out the stuff,” and opened the box he'd brought along. It was filled with items scavenged from his basement, a porcelain vase, a bunch of drinking glasses with groovy '60s designs, a Nerf football with tooth marks in it, a bottle of red nail polish, and other junk chosen for its breakable qualities.
“Here, do the radio,” NP said. “Don't shoot!” He dug into the box and perched an old transistor radio on top of the Karmann Ghia. I took my time. I wiped the sweat off my forehead. I held my shooting arm with my left hand, gunslinger style. Drew a bead.
The radio made a sad “Ting!,” tottered in cheap suspense, and fell in the dirt. I'd hit the radio toward the top, knocking it off-balance. The words “Center of Gravity” occurred to me, secondhand track-and-field lingo from my vain attempt to place out of P.E. that spring through the glory of high jump. I couldn't throw a ball worth shit with my girly arm but somehow I'd hit the radio. NP and Clive whooped it
up, slapping me on the back. Clive offered a terse “Good shooting,” like a drill instructor trying not to be too affirming. I grinned.
We positioned the other relics from NP's basement. The vase didn't explode, but each time it was hit, another jagged section fell off so we could see more of its insides. It finally collapsed on its own while we were reloading. I aimed at an old lampshade of rainbow-colored glass, and while I didn't re-create the swell marksmanship of my first attempt, I had to admit it was fun. Not the shooting itself, but the satisfaction of discovering a new way to kill a chunk of summer. It was like scraping out a little cave, making a new space in the hours to hide in for a time.
I placed the final victim on top of the car—the neon-green Nerf football. We'd saved it for last because nothing topped Nerf abuse. It was Randy's turn, but NP established dibs, as it was his Nerf ball. Which, looking back, was a rare case of one of us challenging Randy, since he had the car. It turned out NP couldn't hit it. Time after time. We'd been out there in the sun and were dehydrated. The rush, the novelty, was gone, and we all felt it.
Finally, NP gave up and handed his pistol to Clive. Randy said, “NP couldn't hit the broad side of a barn,” that hoary marksman's slur.
NP exploded. He had put-downs to spare, but now he grasped after his trademark finesse. “I could hit your fat fuckin' ass fine, you fuckin' Rerun from What's Happening–looking motherfucker.”