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6 OUTSIDE
I got me a car and I got me some gas,
Told everybody they could kiss my ass…
— Glenn Frey
We got into my car and I drove out of the yard. Somehow it had gotten around
to past nine o'clock. How the time flies when you're having fun. A half-moon
stood out in the sky. That and the orange lights in the acres of parking lot at
the Monroeville Mall took care of any wishing stars there might have been.
We drove the first two or three blocks in utter I silence, and then Arnie
suddenly burst into a fury of weeping. I had thought he might cry, but the force
of this frightened me. I pulled over immediately.
"Arnie—"
I gave up right there. He was going to do it until it was done. The tears and
the sobs came in a shrill, bitter flood, and they came without restraint—Arnie
had used up his quota of restraint for the day. At first it seemed to be nothing
but reaction; I felt the same sort of thing myself, only mine had gone to my
head, making it ache like a rotted tooth, and to my stomach, which was sickly
clenched up.
So, yeah, at first I thought it was nothing but a reaction sort of thing, a
spontaneous release, and maybe at first it was. But after a minute or two, I
realized it was a lot more than that; it went a lot deeper than that. And I began
to get words out of the sounds he was making: just a few at first, then strings
of them.
"I'll get them!"
he shouted thickly through the sobs.
"I'll "get those fucking
sons of bitches I'll get them Dennis. I'll make them sorry I'll make those
fuckers eat it… EAT IT… EAT IT!"
"Stop it," I said, scared. "Arnie, quit it."
But he wouldn't quit it. He began to slam his fists down on the padded
dashboard of my Duster, hard enough to make marks.
"I'll get them you see if I don't!"
In the dim glow of the moon and a nearby streetlight, his face looked ravaged
and haglike. He was like a stranger to me then. He was off walking in
whatever cold places of the universe a fun-loving God reserves for people
like him. I didn't know him. I didn't want to know him. I could only sit there
helplessly and hope that the Arnie I did know would come back. After a
while, he did.
The hysterical words disappeared into sobs again. The hate was gone and he
was only crying. It was a deep, bawling, bewildered sound.
I sat there behind the wheel of my car, not sure what I should do, wishing I
was someplace else, anyplace else, trying on shoes at Thom McAn's, filling
out a credit application in a discount store, standing in front of a pay toilet
stall with diarrhea and no dime. Anyplace, man. It didn't have to be Monte
Carlo. Mostly I sat there wishing I was older. Wishing we were both older.
But that was a copout job. I knew what to do. Reluctantly, not wanting to, I
slid across the seat and put my arms around him and held him. I could feel his
face, hot and fevered, mashed against my chest. We sat that way for maybe
five minutes, and then I drove him to his house and dropped him off. After
that I went home myself. Neither of us talked about it later, me holding him
like that. No one came along the sidewalk and saw us parked at the curb. I
suppose if someone had, we would have looked like a couple of queers, I sat
there and held him and loved him the best I could and wondered how come it
had to be that I was Arnie Cunningham's only friend, because right then,
believe me, I didn't want to be his friend.
Yet, somehow—I realized it then, if only dimly—maybe Christine was going
to be his friend now, too. I wasn't sure if I liked that either, although we had
been through the same shit-factory on her behalf that long crazy day.
When we rolled up to the curb in front of his house I said, "You going to be
all right, man?"
He managed a smile. "Yeah, I'll be okay." He looked at me sadly. "You know,
you ought to find some other favorite charity. Heart Fund. Cancer Society.
Something."
"Ahh, get out of here."
"You know what I mean."
"If you mean you're a wet end, you're not telling me anything I didn't know."
The front porch light came on, and both Michael and Regina came flying out,
probably to see if it was us or the State Police come to inform them that their
only chick and child had been run over on the highway.
"Arnold?" Regina called shrilly.
"Bug out, Dennis," Arnie said, grinning a little more honestly now. "This shit
you don't need." He got out of the car and said dutifully, "Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad."
"Where have you been?" Michael asked. "You had your mother badly
frightened, young man!"
Arnie was right. I could do without the reunion scene. I glanced back in the
rearview mirror just briefly and saw him standing there, looking solitary and
vulnerable—and then the two of them enfolded him and began shepherding
him back to the $60,000 nest, no doubt turning the full force of all their latest
parenting trips on him—Parent Effectiveness Training, Erhard Seminars
Training, who knows what else. They were so perfectly rational about it, that
was the thing. They had played such a large part in what he was, and they
were just too motherfucking (and fatherfucking) rational to see it.
I turned the radio on to FM-104, where the Block Party Weekend was
continuing, and got Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band singing "Still the
Same". The serendipity was just a little too hideously perfect, and I dialed
away to the Phillies game.
The Phillies were losing. That was all right. That was par for the course.
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