Trivette went down, people didn’t know what to do. He was some sort of youth leader, young and engaging and relatively new, on loan from an archdiocese out East. He hung out with the altar boys and the Scouts, organized picnics and just-say-no-to-drugs stuff. One Sunday after Mass, Chick and I were up in the bell tower, killing time before basketball practice, passing copies of
Sports Illustrated
and
Victoria’s Secret
back and forth. We weren’t supposed to be there. Bill Trivette caught us, took our magazines, told us to go home or he’d tell our parents. Then, at the last second, he called Chickie back. I waited outside for a half-hour.
Chick’s mom was a regular at the 8 A.M. service, and she didn’t want to believe that anything bad had happened. Chick was dramatic, everybody knew that. Bill Trivette swore it was some sort of misunderstanding, but my mom pushed it with Chief Winston and threatened to go to the
Franchise
if something wasn’t done.
Bill Trivette left soon after that. We never heard where, just that St. Barney’s had sent him away. Events receded. Trivette’s departure became another local mystery, its gaps filled with whispers. For his part, Chick just stopped going to church. Me too, come to think of it. That’s when we took to the woods. But of course people treated him differently. At least for a while. The tenor changed when he walked into a room. Something had happened, something bad, maybe, though nobody knew details. It just became part of the fabric, like a fire scar on a tree trunk, a cross on the side of a highway, a memory of a thing that became the thing itself. There was plenty of stuff like that in childhood.
Chick snored on, and I turned the Escalade onto a side street, unwilling yet to face the garishness of the Knotsford-Gable Road. I drove down Old Normanton Road, past Elm Court, looped back around Tanglewood and the big summer houses on the hills. I wound the truck up toward Richmond, sliding below Saranac and the Apple Tree Inn, above the cow pasture where one summer night Unsie had been getting his first hand-job (allegedly!) from a mildly intoxicated junior named Yolanda Sepulveda and they’d stumbled into an electrified fence. Then above the other pasture where, that same summer, a feeble local kid named Billy Glib got a flat tire on his Mustang, and we were so drunk we jacked up the wrong side of the car. Billy Glib’s Mustang was a stick shift with only four gears, but he didn’t drink and it was the only regular ride in our high school class. He used to say, “Nowhere you can’t get around here in fourth gear.”
I pulled the Escalade into an overlook at the top of Richmond Road, empty on a frigid March night, and got out of the truck. From the overlook, you could look down onto Normanton Bowl. The big lake was limned with moonlight and I watched the clouds roll past the dim distant swell of hills. Lights blinked in the surrounding hillsides, homes and barns and bars, furtive headlights. The hopes and sins of our forebears. My breath floated up into the speckled galaxy. In summer, the woods would be humming with insects, but right then there was no sound, just a sea of stars, an ambient glow, all the dark curves of the majestic nighttime county.
In the parking lot of the Horse Head, the only other car was a purple Trans Am. I pulled up next to it. It was empty, but the lights in Chick’s room were on.
I left him asleep in the truck and crossed to the door. It was open a crack. A quick scan of the lot suggested that we were the only guests staying at the Horse Head, which, I guess, was hardly surprising since it was March, and the Horse Head.
I pushed open the door.
Inside, the overhead light was unflattering. A short, scruffy guy in jeans and a hoodie was sitting at the desk, and a longer, balding guy with a potbelly was lying on Chick’s bed. The longer guy was wearing a Danny Ainge replica Celts jersey under a tracksuit. Fucking Ainge. They were watching
Sports Illustrated
and
Victoria’s Secret
back and forth. We weren’t supposed to be there. Bill Trivette caught us, took our magazines, told us to go home or he’d tell our parents. Then, at the last second, he called Chickie back. I waited outside for a half-hour.
Chick’s mom was a regular at the 8 A.M. service, and she didn’t want to believe that anything bad had happened. Chick was dramatic, everybody knew that. Bill Trivette swore it was some sort of misunderstanding, but my mom pushed it with Chief Winston and threatened to go to the
Franchise
if something wasn’t done.
Bill Trivette left soon after that. We never heard where, just that St. Barney’s had sent him away. Events receded. Trivette’s departure became another local mystery, its gaps filled with whispers. For his part, Chick just stopped going to church. Me too, come to think of it. That’s when we took to the woods. But of course people treated him differently. At least for a while. The tenor changed when he walked into a room. Something had happened, something bad, maybe, though nobody knew details. It just became part of the fabric, like a fire scar on a tree trunk, a cross on the side of a highway, a memory of a thing that became the thing itself. There was plenty of stuff like that in childhood.
Chick snored on, and I turned the Escalade onto a side street, unwilling yet to face the garishness of the Knotsford-Gable Road. I drove down Old Normanton Road, past Elm Court, looped back around Tanglewood and the big summer houses on the hills. I wound the truck up toward Richmond, sliding below Saranac and the Apple Tree Inn, above the cow pasture where one summer night Unsie had been getting his first hand-job (allegedly!) from a mildly intoxicated junior named Yolanda Sepulveda and they’d stumbled into an electrified fence. Then above the other pasture where, that same summer, a feeble local kid named Billy Glib got a flat tire on his Mustang, and we were so drunk we jacked up the wrong side of the car. Billy Glib’s Mustang was a stick shift with only four gears, but he didn’t drink and it was the only regular ride in our high school class. He used to say, “Nowhere you can’t get around here in fourth gear.”
I pulled the Escalade into an overlook at the top of Richmond Road, empty on a frigid March night, and got out of the truck. From the overlook, you could look down onto Normanton Bowl. The big lake was limned with moonlight and I watched the clouds roll past the dim distant swell of hills. Lights blinked in the surrounding hillsides, homes and barns and bars, furtive headlights. The hopes and sins of our forebears. My breath floated up into the speckled galaxy. In summer, the woods would be humming with insects, but right then there was no sound, just a sea of stars, an ambient glow, all the dark curves of the majestic nighttime county.
In the parking lot of the Horse Head, the only other car was a purple Trans Am. I pulled up next to it. It was empty, but the lights in Chick’s room were on.
I left him asleep in the truck and crossed to the door. It was open a crack. A quick scan of the lot suggested that we were the only guests staying at the Horse Head, which, I guess, was hardly surprising since it was March, and the Horse Head.
I pushed open the door.
Inside, the overhead light was unflattering. A short, scruffy guy in jeans and a hoodie was sitting at the desk, and a longer, balding guy with a potbelly was lying on Chick’s bed. The longer guy was wearing a Danny Ainge replica Celts jersey under a tracksuit. Fucking Ainge. They were watching
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