Drop City by T. C. Boyle Page A

trashed wind-sucking son they saw only at dinner because he needed that dinner to stay alive. Might as well wrap them up in mummy’s bandages too, because they were both walking disasters, his father’s nose like a skinned animal pinned to his face with the shiny metallic tackheads of his eyes, his mother a shapeless sack of organs with a howling withered skull stuck atop it. Come to think of it, she could have starred in Screaming Skull herself. And they nagged. Nagged and grunted. Pan looked into the professor’s eyes and then away again. “Yeah,” was all he said.
    â€œAny abuse? You use marijuana? Hard drugs? Booze? What about Free Love? Any social diseases? You vote in the last election?”
    Pan fell into it. He warmed, grew effusive. He told the professor about scoring dope on South Street and cooking it up in whatever semi-clean receptacle that happened to be handy and wouldn’t catch on fire, a spoon usually or one of those little cups they poach eggs in, an example of which he’d had and prized for about a week until it got lost, and he laid out both his arms like exhibits at the morgue to show the professor his tracks that were six months gone because the truth of the matter was heroin scared the shit out of him and he was never going to do anything other than maybe snort it ever again. Drew was dead. And Dead Mike, he was dead too. “But Free Love—oh, man, don’t get me started. That’s what this is all about—the chicks, you know what I mean?” That was when he realized Star was watching him, her knees pulled up to her chin and locked tight in the clasp of her arms, the firelight like hot grease on her face and that smirk she had, that smirk that was more of a put-down than anything she could ever say.
    â€œWhat about VD?” the professor was saying, leaning in close with the microphone, his face hanging there at the end of his veiny blistered old man’s throat like a piñata, the gift-shop peace medallion dangling like a rip cord below that and his eyes like two wriggling leg-kicking toads, and Pan—Ronnie—felt so embarrassed, so fucking mortified and put-upon, he actually jerked the microphone out of the professor’s hand and then, not knowing what to do with it, flung it into the fire in one smooth uncontested motion.
    â€œWhat the hell you think you’re doing?” the professor wanted to know, and his old lady—the poet—said, “American Primitive,” and laughed a long-gone laugh.
    Ronnie was on his feet now, not much kicking power in a pair of huaraches, but enough to send the rest of the apparatus—the big silver-and-gray box with the knobs and dials and slow-turning spools —into the fire too, and the professor shouting and grabbing for themachine amidst the coals and the black and quiescent remains of the deer.
    â€œYou crazy son of a bitch!” That was what the professor said, but it was nothing to Ronnie, he wasn’t even listening. He heard Star laugh though, a hard harsh dart of a laugh that stuck right in him as he went off into the night, looking for something else altogether.
    Later, much later, after sitting around a campfire with some people he didn’t recognize—or maybe he did recognize them—he thought about going up to the back house and seeing what Sky Dog and the spades were up to, but then he thought he wouldn’t. Better not press his luck. There were people who wanted him gone—and here Alfredo’s face loomed up out of a shallow grave in the back corner of his mind, followed in quick succession by Reba’s and Verbie’s—and what happened the other night had split the place down the middle. Lester and Sky Dog and the rest had been voted out, and that meant they didn’t show for meals and kept strictly to themselves, running the Lincoln down to the store for wine, cigarettes and processed cheese sandwiches every couple hours, but