Bad Signs Read online

  But he didn’t.

  He shared them with Elliott. Older brother. Rock of ages. Elliott didn’t have the vision or foresight of his younger brother. The boys were similar perhaps, but only in the thin thread that connected them through their mother. The rest was wildly different, and that difference would only become more evident as time moved on.

  Elliott, now known as Digger to all and sundry, was a magnet for small and unnecessary troubles. Hesperia had served the local community with a juvenile facility for as many years as anyone could remember. Back before secession it had been a prison, before that something else. They had rooms that could sleep eight or ten, and Clarence and Digger were berthed side by side.

  Within their first days at Hesperia Clarence noticed a shift in Digger. Slight, perhaps unnoticeable to anyone but Clarence, but there was a shift. He seemed bigger, a mite taller and wider, and he seemed to hold himself with a good deal more presence. This was more like a grown-up facility, and Clarence believed that Digger knew it would take more work to care for his younger brother.

  “Your name is Clay,” he told Clarence on the third or fourth morning after their arrival. “That’s what you should call yourself. Clarence is all fucked up. Sounds like a homo name. Clay is much better.”

  Clarence was puzzled, but he nevertheless agreed. From that day forward he was Clay Luckman.

  Digger was merely a year and five months older than Clay, but he started to look like a man when he hit twelve. He was willing to fight anyone, and did when it suited him. He lost more often than not, staggered away with his nose bloodied and his pride battered. But he never lost that pride, and he never lost his confidence and willingness to give it his best shot. His fists were all bone and no meat. His temper flared fast like a cheap firework, but he had the carry-through and balls to back it up. Nine times out of ten he went into battle for Clay, and Clay loved him for that. There was a loyalty there, a fraternity that meant the world to them both but for different reasons. Digger had charged himself with the responsibility for Clay’s physical welfare, and Clay, well, he believed that at some point in the future Digger would be receptive to education, enlightenment, a wider mental and emotional perception of life. Digger was the fighter, Clay the negotiator. Digger was the pugilist, Clay the philosopher. Had both parts been worked into one boy, then that would have been some boy. But they were not. There were two of them, linked by blood, but separated by personality.

  One time Clay asked Digger what he wanted.

  “More to eat most of the time,” Digger had replied.

  “You know what I mean, Digger,” Clay said. “From life. From the future.”

  That question had given Digger pause for thought. He did his little disappearing act, and he was gone someplace else for a good three or four minutes. “S’pose when it comes down to it,” he eventually said, “I want the same things as everyone else. Enough smarts to keep out of trouble, enough money to get what I want, enough time to enjoy it.”

  Perhaps that was the deepest Digger would ever go. He had a view of life, a longer-term view, but present environment seemed so present that he rarely saw beyond the next meal.

  Digger carried on fighting. He carried on losing. Clay wondered how much pride he did in fact possess, and how long it could be battered before it was entirely broken.

  So as far as those that were charged with his welfare were concerned, Digger became both a trial and a tribulation. Rumor had it that Digger was going to be there through his eighteenth year, and then he’d be graduated to the big house. Rumor had it that had he not been a juvenile he’d have been there already. Rumor had a lot of things to say for itself, all except some way to determine the truth.

  Digger seemed to find the notoriety and negative reputation somewhat of a charm and an allure.

  “I’m a hot potato,” Digger told Clay. “Far as the law is concerned, that’s what I am.”

  Clay shook his head. He didn’t understand.

  “They got me for a salt and buttery,” Digger explained, and then he bust a gut laughing.

  Digger got like that. He blew hot and cold. A funny guy, very funny, and then all of a sudden serious. Clay sometimes wondered if he hadn’t been hit in the head just a few too many times. It didn’t make sense, but it seemed to Clay that everyone who’d given Digger a kicking had left a little of themselves imprinted on his personality. Or maybe it was that Digger, seeing someone stronger or faster or smarter, had snatched a little of their attitude away while they were pounding on him. Snatched that thing away and kept it for himself in the belief that it would make him stronger. All those bits of people were now there inside of him, packed up tight in his skin, and Clay didn’t know from one mealtime to the next which one he was going to get next.

  Clay loved Digger. He respected him. He cared for his well-being. He also stayed close because no one bothered him if Digger was around. Whenever he got mad with Digger, he had only to cast his mind back to the day of their mother’s death, the way Digger carried water in his cupped hands all the way from the bathroom to where Clay was sitting. He did it many times. He’d figured that Clay was crying so much he’d just dry up and blow away if he didn’t drink plenty of water. In Clay’s mind there was nothing that he would not forgive Digger. He found himself rationalizing Digger’s viewpoints, appreciating his left-of-center sensibilities, listening to his little dreams and aspirations. As time went on they just became closer. See one and you’d see the other. Some other kid said they were probably homos together, but Digger broke the kid’s nose and he never said it again.

  And the more they talked, the more it seemed that Digger’s perspective and viewpoint widened. He listened to his younger brother. He started asking questions. He wanted to know Why this … and Why that … and Clay told him what he knew, or what he thought, or what he imagined was the truth. Digger taught Clay how to hit someone so they wouldn’t get up so fast. He called it “lumberjack fighting,” and Clay paid attention and toughened up somewhat. They were good for each other, and they started to connect not only as half brothers, but as real honest-to-God friends.

  Perhaps Clay figured that was the point at which his fortunes altered. That now he’d outlived the irony of his name and gotten something good. Digger had a dark shadow, but he had a sense of humor and his mind was surprisingly fast. Clay knew he could always count on him in an awkward place. How awkward that place would be, and how it would happen, well, neither of them had the slightest idea.

  “Nothin’s really trouble till you’re caught,” was always a favorite line of Digger’s.

  One time—spring of 1961, Clay all of thirteen, Digger a couple of months more than fifteen—they were out on a field gang, all of them tied together with a length of chain, working like dogs, digging up rocks and stones out of sun-baked fields and loading them in the back of a pickup by the bucketload. The sun was high and brave. The wind out there didn’t blow, it sucked. Sucked every ounce of moisture right out of you and replaced it with dead flies and dust. A hellacious thirst came upon Clay. Would’ve drunk a pint of warm piss had it been offered.

  Duty guard was called Farragut. Sat on a horse and rode back and forth up the line making sure the boys worked hard and fast. Wore an expression like he’d had toothache his whole life. He was a compact knotted little man. If you hit him you would hurt for days. He would never go down without a bullet or two. Farragut was known as Shoeshine. Kicked boys in the ass of their pants all day and all night until his toecaps glossed up like river pebbles. He had true meanness deep inside of him, as tight and twisted as a box of snakes. He said little, but when he did the words sounded practiced.

  “Toe the line and I’m behind you, boy. Cross it and I’ll be the first agin you,” he’d say, and “I told you with words to quieten down, boy. Next time I’m telling you with fists.” Such tough poetry as this.

  First time Clay met Shoeshine was his second day at Hesperia. “Seems to me you got only two expressions, boy,” was his greeting. “Caus
ing trouble an’ asking for forgiveness. Well, you listen here now. I won’t have the first and I won’t give the second. That keeps it simple enough for both of us to understand.”

  Shoeshine had a cool box in the foot well of the service truck. Inside of the cool box were a half dozen or so chilled bottles of root beer. That day, April something-or-other of 1961, Digger took a liking to the idea of a root beer, a chilled root beer in a glass bottle with a crimped metal cap. Being Digger, he was suited to doing the job with his fists, not with his smarts, but this day was different; this day Digger had a mind to working some kind of angle on Clay.

  “No way, Digger,” Clay told him. “You get busted for some foolish stunt like that they’re gonna beat you and throw you in the tool shed for the rest of the day.”

  “You think I can’t take it?” Digger asked.

  “Hell, Digger, sure you can take it. The point is not whether you can take it, it’s whether it’s worth it for some foolish dumbass bottle of root beer.”

  “But it sure would taste so good, right? You like root beer, right? Hell, everyone likes root beer. And it’d be so cold, and it’d taste so good, and it would be worth it, I reckon.”

  “Digger, you are sometimes so fuckin’ stupid.”

  “Thirsty,” Digger said. “Not stupid, just real thirsty.”

  It was a bad game from the start. Digger didn’t say anything directly. Perhaps it was Clay’s own fault by mentioning the fact that another transgression would see Digger into the tool shed with a few more bruises. Digger just kept on talking about the damned root beer. How cold, how tasty, how refreshing, how special on such a hot, hot day. Perhaps it had been his plan all along, but it seemed that Digger was trying to persuade and cajole Clay with his mind. Like he was set to hypnotize his younger brother. Later, after many other troubles, Clay Luckman would wonder if Digger had such a power, or if it was just his own mental process that was weak. Digger turned Clay’s thoughts in such a way as to make him believe that stealing a bottle of root beer from Shoeshine was the only thing that could be done. Maybe it was Digger who did that, or maybe it was simply the memory of Digger walking back from that bathroom with his hands full of water.

  “I know you don’t agree,” Digger said, “but maybe it’s right to feel sore about people who have a lot of things. Like the more they have, the less there is for everyone else.” He carried his broomstave across his shoulders like a yoke, his hands up and over left and right. He and Clay were walking to the edge of the road to get water. An old truck had been abandoned amidst the foot-flattened ridges of a fallow—four, five bullet holes in the radiator grille like the thing had quit one time too many. To hell with you, someone had thought, and took a rifle from the rear rack and shot the thing dead where it stood. You don’t work for me … hell, you don’t work for no one. Federal yellow flowers had grown up around the spare on the tailboard and made a crude wreath. Given enough time the seasons would take it all down to rust and dust. The other kids were coming down behind them. A five-minute break for hydrating, and then back to work. They gathered along a high dirt bank punctuated with rough handfuls of hardy sedge, dun and dry and dusty. This land hadn’t seen rain for weeks, and the air itself made you cough. Fifty yards away was a deserted homestead; stone ruins like broken teeth, as if this were all that remained of some giant’s fractured jawbone. Perhaps this was such a place where folks weren’t s’posed to settle.

  “Take this situation, for example,” Digger said. “I’m one to latch on to an idea and let it take hold.” He smiled. “Like this here root beer proposition. Seems to me that if you decide you want something, and then give up on the idea because it’s too much trouble … well, you say this yourself. You gotta decide on a plan and then carry it through despite whatever obstacles come in the way, right?”

  “Sure,” Clay replied, the sense of resignation already evident in his voice. He knew where this was going, and he didn’t like it. “I’m talking about what you want, Digger … what you want when we get out of here. I’m not talking about a bottle of root beer.”

  Clay looked sideways at Digger. He was waiting for a response, but Digger didn’t say a word. He shielded his eyes against the sun. He looked out to where Shoeshine was watering his horse, and then back to the truck. The door was closed but unlocked.

  Clay looked at Digger again and shook his head. Digger just returned an expression like he’d lost a piece of his mind and never cared to look for it.

  “Some folks don’t deserve to be wished well, wouldn’t you say?” Digger asked.

  “I think there’s some good to be found in everyone.”

  “Sure, that’s as may be, but with some folks you gotta dig real deep to find it.”

  “Yeah, I’d say so.”

  “Shoeshine for example—”

  “It ain’t gonna work, Digger. I ain’t doin’ this thing.”

  “Well, I see things different from you, Clay,” Digger said. “I see a guy like Shoeshine, and he’s got what he’s got, and we ain’t got nothin’, but he’s the bad guy here, he’s the one who likes to kick kids and hurt them and whatever …”

  “You are crazy,” Clay said. “Always have been, always will be. Sometimes I don’t know whether you’re being serious or just winding me like a cheap watch.”

  “Whichever way you wanna take it,” Digger said, and then he looked at Clay for a while longer, and then out to the truck, and then he smiled and said something about water being for horses and dogs and gardens.

  Clay drank the water. Water was good enough for him. He didn’t need a root beer, and he sure as hell didn’t need the kind of trouble that would come from stealing one from off of Shoeshine.

  “Seems to me that good things don’t come find you. They stay where they are and you have to go looking. And hell, if they don’t hide in the damnedest of places.” Digger shook his head and looked out toward the horizon. “Bad things, however … well, let’s just say that bad things is something else altogether. Bad things can find you anyplace, and sometimes it means a great deal to have someone there who can help you take care of them …”

  “I don’t want to go,” Clay said. When he first thought of the words they sounded strong and definite. When they left his lips they didn’t.

  The tension between them was so solid you could have pushed it over.

  Clay wanted to say Fuck you, Digger, but he stayed silent.

  Looking at Digger then, he realized another facet of their difference. Digger was not stupid, never had been, but there was a shadow there, something that perhaps had come from his own father. Digger always appeared to be looking for the slant and pitch of the situation, how angles could be influenced to some small advantage. Digger was certainly no stranger to threat or violence, neither of them were, but maybe Digger was the sort of person to bring his own if none were present. It gave him the upper hand. Perhaps he believed he would make his mark more firmly on the world if he made others around him unsettled.

  They went back to work for another two hours, scratching stones and rocks out of the dirt with their hands, an exercise that seemed to serve no purpose but to keep them occupied.

  The feeling came upon Clay slowly. It was the kind of feeling that got right down into the basement of his gut and stayed there, slow-cooking like a pit barbecue. He believed that if he didn’t do what Digger had asked of him then there would be discord between them. That was more trouble than he could weather. Clay knew that Digger would never threaten him, never hurt him. Nothing like that. It was not a concern for what Digger would do to him, but what could be taken away. Without Digger he would be adrift in this world. He would manage, of course, but the tension and agitation that would become part of his life without Digger there to defend and protect him would be a strain he could do without. He thought of the times Digger had pasted some kid who was grieving him. Without Digger as a shield perhaps that kid would come back for revenge. He had never really had to do such things alone. Yes, he began to think, perhaps
all of the past avoidances would come back at him. Right when he least expected it. Saying nothing about the violence itself, the surprise would be enough to kill him.

  Clay said nothing, but he watched the pattern that Shoeshine followed. The service truck sat at the side of the road, no more than twenty feet from the wheels to the edge of the hot top. The line of boys—more than eighty of them—stretched a good two hundred yards. Shoeshine paced his horse from one end of the chain to the other. He looked ahead of him, never back—not unless someone called for permission to take a piss. If that happened he would watch the boy until his business was done, and then he would resume the walk. Clay counted the time it took from one end of the line to the other. From the moment he turned he reckoned three minutes until Shoeshine was coming back the other way.

  Next break time Digger said something to Clay. Said it low like a whisper, nothing direct. “Sometimes I feel like there’s two sides to me. Sometimes I think the only reason I have a left hand is to stop my right hand from doing stuff it wants to.” Digger tried to hide his smile, but it was there in his eyes. He was winding, winding, winding.

  “You are so full of shit,” Clay said. “You think you can make me do this—”

  Digger laughed. “Hey, man, cool it. I’m just baiting you.”

  Clay opened his mouth, and then he hesitated. There was a change in his expression, a different light in his eyes. There was some shadow of grim determination that seemed to have taken hold. He looked across at Shoeshine, at the truck, back to Digger, and then he said, “I’ll do it. Don’t say any more. I’ll get you your root beer.”

  Digger didn’t say a thing. He didn’t even smile. Expression on his face was suddenly serious and implacable, like he’d spent a lifetime walking against the wind.

  Clay wondered then if Digger would try and stop him. Wondered if the whole thing had been nothing but a test. Now it was there, now Clay had agreed to do it, well, he had demonstrated courage sufficient for Digger to ease up. Digger would say the whole thing had been a prank, a stunt, and he had no more yen for a root beer than he did a snake sandwich.