Good Behavior Read online

  The world is full of fearful people, so they bullshit each other, they lie their asses off, and even though neither person in the transaction believes a word of what the other one says, they assume the other one believes at least some of what they are saying—and in that, they feel they have achieved some bit of power. Thanks to Adela and her sick little setup, this was what the world suddenly looked like to me—not all of it, and maybe not where it counted, but bullshit, fear, and the pursuit of power did a pretty damn good job of summing up a whole lot of human relationships.

  [ THIRTY-TWO ]

  Twin brothers, Irish, reddish brown hair, pale, and kind of on the skinny side, but tough as hell. You might not think it when you looked at them, but they were hard guys. Norton and Justin O’Reilly. They lived out in the country a few miles from the Turner farm, and in the early days we’d see them every once in a while, then less later on. We never hung out with them.

  Maybe a mile from the farmhouse was a spot where the creek widened a bit and became about six feet deep, which David called the fishing hole. One day, when I was thirteen or fourteen, the O’Reillys were there and tried to start a fight with us—this was before I’d ever been in a fight, so I was intimidated, and so was David. Philip, at that age, was too small to be of any use. It was David and me against the O’Reillys. And they were tougher—they were higher-quality specimens—there was no denying it. I was in track with them in middle school. We’d run the same races. Justin would come in first, Norton second, and me third, every time. We didn’t fight that day at the fishing hole, but the time would come.

  Norton and Justin, although twins, had opposite temperaments. Justin was a fairly smooth, calm, respectful guy, but he was tougher than Norton. The fights or near-fights were always instigated by Norton, and out of a sense of obligation, Justin would back him up. But Justin never started fights. Norton was an asshole, a loudmouthed cocksucker who needed someday to be put in his place. He and I were in the same math class in ninth grade, and I had had enough of his shit. I called him on it one day. He was picking on a smaller kid named Billy, poking him in the chest, just generally terrorizing him. I didn’t care much for Billy—in fact I myself would kick the hell out of him the next year—but for the moment, I couldn’t overlook any more of what I saw as dirty mick injustice.

  I said, “Norton, sit the fuck back down or I’ll make you sit down.”

  He stared at me like he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’ll knock your fucking head off, man. Leave him alone.”

  Norton flew into a rage. His face turned red; his nostrils flared. When he had recovered from his surge of primitive emotion, he said, “All right. Saturday. Brickville. You and me.”

  “All right, bitch.” I smirked. “I’ll see you there.”

  I trained for a week. In the attic of our house, I had a small gym, weight bench, and punching bag—an army duffel bag suspended from a rafter and stuffed with blankets. I still had never been in a fight, but it couldn’t be that big of a deal. You approach. You punch. You punch him in the face. You keep punching until he’s down on the ground, bleeding and crying. You’ve won. So I practiced punching. I threw thousands of punches into the duffel bag. By the time Saturday arrived, I was ready to go. I was a killing machine.

  Philip had spent the night, and around noon he and I walked to the prearranged site, behind Wentler’s Pond. We crossed the Black Pipe, climbed a small hill, and rounded the pond. It was behind a small factory, Wentler’s Machine Shop. I’d spent my childhood playing back there. Closer to the factory you can find skids loaded down with small, strangely shaped pieces of steel. These pieces were such odd objects that they were endlessly appealing, though completely useless to me.

  There they were. Norton O’Reilly and one other boy I didn’t know.

  “You ready to die, motherfucker?” Norton said.

  I smiled. I walked straight up to him and prepared to throw my first punch. He immediately went into a frenzy, a flurry of light punches rained on me. There were several opportunities for me to nail him, but I didn’t take them. I just couldn’t punch him. I didn’t know what to make of it. I felt such a tremendous resistance to punching another human being that I just allowed him to hammer me. Eventually, he landed one in my eye, blinding me. I felt unbelievable pain as I clutched my eye and bent over, yelling, “I can’t see! I can’t see!”

  Norton stopped punching. The fight was over. He had won. I had lost. I was beaten, whupped, made a bitch.

  Two years later, after I’d been in several more fights and had successfully beaten the shit out of at least four other boys, I found David in the lunch line at school. Standing in front of him, facing him, poking him in the chest, was Norton O’Reilly.

  “What you gonna do about it? What the fuck you gonna do about it?” He kept poking David, and it was obvious that David wasn’t going to do a damn thing.

  Well, now I was older and more experienced. Now I was in a position to take him down. I had become a scrapper, a badass with a handful of bloody victories under my belt. The time had come, so I seized the opportunity.

  I rushed up to Norton and shoved him as hard as I could. He fell back against the wall, and just as I was about to throw the first punch—my fist was raised—he yelled, “Wait!”

  I paused. I shouldn’t have. I immediately regretted it.

  He said, “You piece of shit. I’m not getting suspended because of you.”

  “Fuck you, mick,” I said. “I don’t give a shit about suspension.”

  “That’s because you’re a fucking loser,” he said. “Meet me in town, and I’ll give you an ass-beating you’ll never fucking forget.”

  I stuck a finger in his face and said, “We’ll see, motherfucker.” And I walked away.

  Half an hour later, I was standing outside the school in a spot between two walls where I could smoke without being seen, and David was telling me that I’d made a mistake. “You can’t fight Justin!” he said. “Why would you fight Justin?”

  “What?” I asked. “Justin? That wasn’t Norton?”

  “No, man. That was Justin.”

  “Justin?” And I knew he was right. I felt a subtle turn in my stomach. Those fucking mick twins … Shit.

  Justin was the tougher, the quicker, and the smarter of the two. I had never had a beef with Justin—I respected him—and I might even say that if Justin was intimidating David, then perhaps he had a good reason. Norton was the one I wanted. Redemption was what I was after, not a brand-new war.

  “Fuck,” I said. “I gotta go talk to him.” I dropped the cigarette and ground it into the pavement, picked up the butt and stuffed it into my pocket, and went back into the school. I found Justin at his locker.

  “Justin.” He looked at me. “Look, man, I thought you were Norton. I really have no interest in fighting you, man. Let’s just forget about it.”

  “I’m not forgetting anything. You started this. We’re gonna fucking finish it.”

  This infuriated me. “All right, motherfucker. That’s fine.” And I walked away.

  I was with David when I got off the bus. I expected Justin to be waiting at my bus stop, but he wasn’t. I knew where he got off the bus, so I took off in that direction. I took my leather jacket off and gave it to David.

  “Hold this,” I said, which he did, for a few minutes, until he realized we had some distance to go. He threw it back at me.

  “Hold your own jacket, man!” David had some dignity.

  I charged down Main Street, pumping myself up. I could see a crowd of people two hundred yards away, and Justin was in the middle of them. This was it. No hesitation, no resistance. Just walk up and nail the cocksucker. Pound that fucker into the ground. Hit him first and keep hitting for as long as I can. That was my only chance. As I got closer, I dropped my jacket, my vision began to glaze over, to blur slightly, and I knew that I was going into fight mode. But within five feet of the asshole, I felt hands on my chest and shoulders.<
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  People were saying, “Wait. Not here, man.”

  They pointed to an empty lot next to the hardware store, where the ground was barren and gravelly. There were a couple trucks parked there and the hardware store was open. They knew me. That’s where I’d gotten my hunting license renewed every year, where Dad sent me for nails and other supplies for his projects. Somebody’s bound to call the cops, I thought. Justin had already started in that direction. His shirt was off. He was pale and skinny, as I said, like he was still suffering from the potato famine. But I knew what kind of ass-whupping power the bastard had. I had to hit first, or I’d never survive.

  Justin rolled his head around and flexed his neck muscles. I charged, and before I could land a single punch—

  He got me square in the face. I reeled. He flurried like his brother, but these were fast, measured, hard blows. There was nothing I could do. I had no opportunities. I lost my footing in the gravel and went down on one knee. My hands went out for support, and he landed one final shot, a closed-fist backhanded shot right in the center of my face. My nose popped, cartilage shattered, and blood gushed out. I didn’t know I was capable of bleeding that much.

  Justin still had ahold of my shirt and yelled, “Is that it?! Are you finished?”

  I spat through a face full of blood. “Yeah, I’m finished.”

  He let me go. I steadied myself with one hand and clutched my nose with the other. The blood was soaking my chest and the ground.

  His brother, Norton, appeared out of nowhere in a rage and towered over me. He was like a dog riled up by the sight of blood. He said, “You wanted to fight me. You wanna fight me now, motherfucker? Come on, is that what you want? Finish him off, Justin! Kick his fucking head in”—and he pulled his leg back as if he were about to do it himself. What a disgusting human being, I thought. I just hope he doesn’t kick me. But Justin shoved his brother back and screamed at him to shut the fuck up. Then he stood before me and extended his hand. I took it, and he helped me to my feet.

  “Everything’s cool, then?” he said.

  I nodded. Every time I breathed, I shot a spray of blood into the air in front of me. I speckled his face with blood, but he pretended not to notice.

  [ THIRTY-THREE ]

  Dicky was never getting out of jail. His bail was something like a million dollars and there was no way his mother could come up with collateral for that. He was stuck until he was sentenced, just like me. So I saw him every day, even though we weren’t cellmates. We went to rec together.

  The rec yard was a sixty-foot-long, thirty-foot-wide courtyard with a concrete floor and twenty-five-foot-high stone walls all the way around it. Stretched over the top of it was chain-link fencing, and around the tops of the walls was razor wire. There were two wrought-iron benches coated in rubber against a wall, and two basketball hoops, one at either end of the yard.

  We seldom played real basketball games. That required too much effort. When you sit in a jail cell for twenty-three hours a day, you get fat and lazy. I had put on fifteen pounds, and when I sat down on the toilet my thighs touched each other for the first time in my life. We played HORSE. It required no gymnastics, and it held our attention.

  “So, I’m reading about serial killers,” I told Dicky. The guard sat inside the door to the rec yard, so he couldn’t hear what we were talking about.

  “Yeah?” he asked. “Which ones?” He stood facing me with both his wrists limp and his mouth agape with his tongue over his lower teeth. “You got an H and an O?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I walked to where the ball was rolling slowly away from the wall, stooped down, and picked it up. “All of them,” I said. “Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer. What do you think about all that?” I took aim at the basket, shot, and missed. “Serial killers and shit.”

  Dicky retrieved the ball, just as slowly as I did. “Well,” he said, nodding his head, “I say, if it feels good, do it.”

  “Really?” I looked up at the sky through the fencing. It was the only time we ever got to see blue sky. “That’s kind of fucked up, man.”

  He lifted the ball up and grinned. “Everything’s fucked up.” He shot. Missed. The ball bounced off the wall and rolled back to him. He picked it up and threw it to me.

  I caught the ball. I looked at him. “You killed that old lady, didn’t you?”

  “I told you,” he said. “My buddy did it.”

  I nodded, tried to do a hook shot. “That’s so fucked up,” I said.

  “Yeah, so are you.”

  “Not that fucked up,” I said.

  He laughed. “Right.” He followed the ball and stopped just over it, looked back at me, and said, “Give it time. You’re halfway there.”

  He picked up the ball and took aim. I watched him.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I said.

  He looked at me, smiled. “Nothing at all, man.”

  [ THIRTY-FOUR ]

  Sixteen was a significant year. All the really important things in my life, the explosions, the catastrophic events, all started unfolding—rehab, the fire in the school, the arrests, Joan, the robbery, the high-speed chase, jail. Like dominoes falling, like an algebra problem being worked out.

  My mom and dad always went to bed around eleven, and when I felt it reasonably safe, I’d sneak out and walk up to the pizza shop. On this night it was particularly busy, and when I walked through the front door Mickey Bowen yelled something at me about how pissed off I was about to be.

  Charlie Bender stopped me by the pinball machine and said, “That Mindy bitch is your girlfriend, Nate?”

  I had met Mindy very recently through another girl who’d said Mindy would put out. Mindy was kind of ugly, and she was stupid, but I didn’t have any other options. So I talked to her a few times, and we even kissed once, kind of—a half-assed kiss—so yeah, I thought I had enough reason to consider her my girlfriend.

  I nodded. “Why?”

  “Dude, we saw her down at the ballpark fucking around with a bunch of guys. Word is she sucked off about six dudes.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I was confused. It was too much to wrap my head around.

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “It’s true, man. I’m sorry.” I nodded and lit a smoke and went into the back room, leaned against a wall, and pretended to watch a couple of guys shoot a game of pool. Could this be true? It could be.

  Just then Charlie yelled, “Nate, you sneak out again?”

  I yelled, “Yeah, why?”

  “Your dad’s here.”

  I went out front, and sure enough Dad was coming by the front windows. He opened the front door, spotted me, and snarled, “Come on!”

  I walked down the sidewalk in front of him as he was saying, “Can’t fuckin’ trust you, can I? Can’t fuckin’ trust you at all.”

  I wanted to turn around and bash his head in. When we got in the front door of our house, he shoved me. I stayed as firm as I could and turned around.

  He said, “Oh, you want to fight? You think you can whip me? Anytime you fucking want, boy!”

  I didn’t. I knew he could still knock the shit out of me.

  Flipping off the world became a drug for me. I realized that authority was an illusion that required participation from both parties. If one party (the controlled) refused to play along, the other party (the controller) would lose their balance, drop the ball, get confused. In that window before they figured out how to regain their power, you were absolutely free. During class, while the teacher lectured, I’d get up and go over to the window, look outside, daydream, because I could. When the teacher told me to return to my seat, I’d refuse, because I could. When they told me to go to the office, I’d go outside, go into the woods, smoke a cigarette. Then I’d go to my next class. The principal would call me over the PA, and I’d go pay him a visit. He’d suspend me, call my parents, send me home.

  If Mom and Dad grounded me for two weeks because of my suspension, I’d go upstairs, cut through the storage room,
climb out the window, slide down the side of the house, and walk uptown. I would say to myself, “I can do anything I want.” I had no limits. If I observed limits, it was because I consented to those limits, only because defying them wasn’t worth the hassle. I always knew what the consequences would be. I knew the disciplinary schedule at school. Ten detentions before you got a Saturday school, five Saturday schools before you got a three-day in-school suspension. Two three-days before you got a ten-day. Then it’s out-of-school suspension. Two three-days, then a ten-day. Two ten-days, then expulsion. I was proud that up until this point I had been given everything except expulsion, and expulsion would come. I was exhausting the disciplinary schedule.

  In school, I always knew what to expect. It was the legal system I wasn’t prepared for. When I set the fire in school and was sent to the juvie jail, I was surprised. It was a miserable, nightmare place, and it was clear that now I had moved beyond an environment where authority perhaps hoped for a better solution. I had moved into an environment where authority punished with a crushing indifference. When I went to real jail, when I was facing prison, this was even more obvious. The legal system doesn’t wear kid gloves. The legal system doesn’t care. The legal system was an authority that wasn’t going to get confused when I refused to play along. The legal system never gets confused. So juvie surprised me, and jail shocked me.