Halfway Read online

  I turned in my bed. Outside, snow fell but just slightly, a hazy flurry of speckled flakes, a dusting really, just a dusting, but it didn’t stop, and by morning snowdrifts would pile around our cabin. It was Thanksgiving. I reached up and touched the slats above me, felt grooves where boys had carved their names, hometowns, admit dates. The dates were always just the first day with a dash, as if they planned on coming back and inscribing their last day, but last days always changed or guys swapped cabins and forgot.

  * * *

  IT WAS A TEN-THOUSAND-ACRE working ranch in an obscure valley in the Rocky Mountains. Cattle guards pocked a dirt road running through it. Livestock fencing surrounded our living quarters. There were a few barns, a stable, pump- and outhouses, a septic building, a tack room and bunkhouse, prefabs with corrugated steel roofs and corrugated siding where we met with social workers; in a ten-wide, we took diagnostics. The ranch had Clydesdales, rusted farm trucks, a basketball hoop. An old house with its windows blown out and upstairs cordoned off had been converted to a rumpus room with a Ping-Pong table and weight bench, a woodstove its only source of heat. In surrounding fields and woods were straw-and-sod structures so old and run-down I couldn’t guess their original use. It was desolate, beautiful—evergreens covered the snowy mountains that rose pristine on the far horizon.

  There were no TVs or radios; nothing hung from the walls in our cabins. We couldn’t read, listen to music, or follow the news. We couldn’t talk on the phone; there were no computers. Entertainment came in the form of masturbation, fuckaround-fuckaround, and late-night hijinks.

  They called it voluntary, and though windows opened freely, doors remained unlocked, there were no guard towers or razor wire, and we could leave, technically, if we wanted, I’ve come to think of the word “voluntary” as quite a bit different now. It was twenty miles to the nearest gas station, even farther to a bus depot. No taxis passed. No nearby neighbors meant no nearby cars to steal. Hitchhiking was possible, guys did it, but winter in that pocket of America can be unkind to people caught on the road. Glorified orderlies, called night techs, and social workers came and went in weather-beaten SUVs I’d stare at longingly, imagining myself behind the wheel with only the continent in front of me, but the techs carried small arms—Glocks, Berettas, .25s—and the social workers removed their car batteries at the start of each shift. All of them knock-around types and former cons who’d seen it all, they’d peer over a cigarette, tell us how lucky we were—you oughta seen Father Mike’s outside Pittsburgh. Oh, hell no, this ain’t no home. Homes are blah-blah a Quonset hut, one two three hundred bunks in all, guys gagging you in the shower and— But they never finished the thought.

  * * *

  I’M NOT SURE WHO TRULY BELIEVED, who was just getting paid. They tossed us stacks of paperwork, all of it intro-level, basic, fill-in-the-blanks—list examples of powerlessness, write an essay on your own insanity. Then they’d jack the heat up, offer Kleenex. Letters from our parents called this “treatment,” said from it we’d get fixed, and we’d sit about the porch, cigarettes frozen to our lips, with spit-crusted beards and wind-bit eyes, reading these letters aloud. Huh. Is that so?

  We shoveled ice, dug slabs of granite from the earth, and moved them. Rock has never been moved so ambivalently from one pile to another, digging it up, taking it out, digging and putting it back, continuously this movement for hours on end, as if the act of excavation were the only goal, and who knows—people say idle hands are the devil’s dick skinners—maybe it was. Like the child actor, boys who’d been other places told stories of fruit baskets, fancy cheeses, swimming pools, blow jobs off the eighteenth green, but if that happened here, I didn’t see it. We played chess, Ping-Pong, slap and tickle, perpetrated cup checks, flushed empty toilets while boys showered, lifted weights, and smoked many a cigarette staring out at pastures, evergreens, and mountains, a low gray or high blue sky, all of it striking, full or vacant, perfectly lighted or bleak, intriguing and desolate. There’d been a pool once, but it had long since been drained and filled in with rocks other boys had moved and poured over with ready-mix and grouted so all that remained was an iced-over slab other boys would one day break apart. We cut down trees, carried them on our shoulders, four five six boys to a tree, set them on sawhorses, shaved their bark, sanded, primed, and painted them, or walked behind farm trucks pitchforking hay and tossing it over our shoulders.

  It felt like a work camp, a boys’ home.

  * * *

  THEY WANTED US TO TALK and share our feelings but, no disrespect, that’s not for me. In group, I hid behind my hair, or by pretending to pay close attention, or spacing out. They always had agendas. How about your biological father? they’d ask. How do you feel about him?

  Fine.

  C’mon, Tommy. The group can help.

  Naw, I said. Thanks and all, but naw.

  This, they claimed, was pure disease. They got threatening: If you don’t talk about him, you’ll drink again.

  How’s that follow? It didn’t seem logical. And besides. That guy said it himself—he’s done with me. You should see the letter he wrote.

  Tell us about the letter.

  Naw, I’d say, for it was shameful to me, and didn’t fit with my delusions of what I meant to him.

  They’d elongate a silence, look at us with their piercing eyes, smoke shrouding their faces, a kind of smile both sad and amused.

  It was not uncommon for the young boy to gather snowballs and sticks, rocks or frozen cow dung, and hide behind the septic tank, waiting for half-asleep boys to stumble along. He stood five foot three—too young to have hit any growth spurt or too stunted by the gasoline he’d huffed—and weighed no more than eighty-five pounds, a perfect waif, really. Most days, returning to our cabin, I’d find him bandied about as if a Frisbee. He’d careen off a bunk and into the arms of someone who’d choke him to his knees or slap at and sucker-punch him. But he didn’t care. That’s the thing. He didn’t give a shit. He’d reach into the stall and snake your toilet paper while you shat or kick you square in the ass while you peed.

  The child actor was bisexual, the young boy a sociopath, Visalia schizophrenic. I liked Visalia. This couldn’t be true. Is it? I asked him.

  It is, he said.

  A thought occurred. What does that even mean?

  It means I’m crazy, he said.

  How does that happen? I asked.

  And then he told me.

  * * *

  I PREPARED TO RUN, practicing the same simple math I’d practiced for years—buy an ounce for sixty, sell a quarter for thirty-five—and counted the days until I could leave, whipping a shovel like a baseball bat—step, hip, hands—always keeping the spade inside the ball. In a pair of boots in my mom’s house was a pound of dirt weed worth a grand if I broke it into eighths and sold it on the East Coast. I’d go back to Georgia, I figured, maybe boarding school, find that pretty girl, and bang her on her knees.

  Send me those boots, I wrote my mom. It’s cold here. Lots of snow. I can never stay warm.

  * * *

  THEY EXAMINED AND BATTERED US, looking for disorders beyond the normal drug- and alcohol-induced insanity, patterns within those disorders, whatever new normalcy emerged—we studied ink blots, suffered psychiatrists—one test had six hundred true/false questions. They gave us an hour to complete it. Some of it made sense. Like: Once in a while I think of things too bad to talk about. My father was a good man. Or, if he is still living, my father is a good man. At times, I have very much wanted to leave home. And yet most of it was weird: I like dirt. I used to like drop-the-handkerchief.

  They administered the test in a ten-wide trailer on the edge of a pasture. We used number two pencils. While waiting, boys played war, UNO, chess: I am troubled by attacks of nausea and vomiting. I would like to be a singer. I feel that it is certainly best to keep my mouth shut when I’m in trouble. At times, I feel like swearing.

  I see different sides of things, duality, alternate interpretatio
ns, think of words as less than rules, the boundaries of their definitions fluid, such as “seldom” and “troubled.”

  I’d be lying straight up if I denied the poetry in some questions, their intuition, enigma, and power. At their clearest, they were true, undeniable, obvious: If people had not had it in for me, I would have been much more successful. During one period when I was a youngster, I engaged in petty thievery. At times, I feel like smashing things.

  We were gaunt in appearance, had enlarged pupils, reacted in slo-mo, were slow to understand, slow to grasp, slow at everything, clinically anxious, depressed, bipolar, suicidal, certifiable. Occasionally, the police or FBI came and arrested someone. And though we were dumb, thoughtless, and lacking foresight, we were genius, old school, streetwise. How could we respond to questions that came from both nowhere and deep inside? It seemed our hearts had broken loose and were laid out now on paper: I’ve had periods of days, weeks, or months when I couldn’t take care of things because I couldn’t get it going. My sleep is fitful and disturbed. I don’t always tell the truth. My soul sometimes leaves my body.

  I wanted to insert parentheticals, exclamation points, comments on syntax, word choice. It evoked feelings of mistrust, confusion: I prefer to pass by school friends, or people I know but have not seen in a long time, unless they speak to me first. I am liked by most people who know me. Even when clear-cut, true/false was too confining: As a youngster, I was suspended from school one or more times for cutting up. Where do I write my “yes, but”? I wanted third and fourth options to rebut, justify, evoke meaning: I am a good mixer. The fuck does it mean: I have not lived a good life. Parts of my body often have feelings like burning, tingling, crawling, or “going to sleep.” I sometimes keep on at a thing until others lose patience with me.

  We asked why, what for, and, waiting, heard pencils snap, erasers scrub: I get angry sometimes. I am troubled by discomfort in the pit of my stomach every few days or oftener. I am an important person. I wish I could be as happy as others seem to be. I enjoy reading love stories. I like poetry. Most of the time I feel blue. I think I would like the kind of work a forest ranger does. I am easily downed in an argument. I would like to be a florist. I usually feel that life is worthwhile. It takes a lot in an argument to convince most people of the truth. Once in a while I put off until tomorrow what I ought to do today.

  The questions cycled on with slight word changes, phrasing flipped. Inverses. I’d like to be a nurse. Most people would lie to get ahead. Dirt is nice, etc. I do many things I regret afterward. I was suspended from school one or more times for bad behavior. At times, I have a strong urge to do something harmful or shocking. I have met problems so full of possibilities that I have been unable to make up my mind about them. My hardest battles are with myself. I don’t seem to care what happens to me. I love my father. Or, if my father is dead, I loved my father.

  * * *

  EVERY FEW WEEKS a group of boys’ families came, and then those boys went into the wilderness for three weeks on Trip. Trip was supposed to be a coming-of-age moment, meant to foster faith and lay a foundation of self-belief, and indeed boys returned so moved by the experience their feet never hit the ground and they’d hover about mess and regale us with one half-told tale or another—I’d tell you more, they’d explain, but you had to be there. And though boys were changed by the event—they listened intently now, laughed harder, gave less a fuck but less a fuck in a good way—I had zero expectations for Trip and no hope beyond survival.

  When word came that my pot-filled boots had arrived, a tech pulled me from the rumpus, escorted me to the rancher’s home. I thought for sure I’d be kicked out now. But inside that warm home, the tech just laughed at me, pointed at my empty boots. Nice one. Try again. Better luck next time.

  Fuck. I untied my shoes and pulled the boots on. That it?

  No. He pointed at the phone. Your mom wants to talk.

  Okay, I thought, okay. Here comes the noise. She’d gripe about what a manipulative “jerk” I was, but silt clogged her voice, all throaty and sad. Sweetie, she said, I know you don’t want to talk about your dad, but—

  I cut her off. I don’t.

  —I’ve been having this feeling.

  Leave it, Mom.

  I called your grampa. How are things, by the way?

  What did Grampa say?

  Oh, sweetie, she said. You know. He loves your dad very much. He. He’s sad.

  About what?

  You need to call your dad. He’s expecting you. I love you.

  I hung up and watched the tech zip his coat and then unzip it. The rancher came in. His wife, too. She was a small woman whom we rarely saw, and she sat at the edge of a chair and looked at me. Well, she said.

  I’ll call him.

  She nodded. The tech nodded. The rancher stared at the floor. They all knew.

  I guess I joked with my dad at first. You’ll never guess where I am—ha-ha.

  I know where you are, he said.

  You talked to my mom?

  I know where you are.

  So, yeah. Well. That’s how the story ends, anyway. No college.

  You don’t know that.

  I know I won’t be going to Harvard.

  Whatever, he said. That place is a shithole.

  It’s been weird, Dad, I said. Very. And I wanted to tell him things, mostly about sports, how much they meant to me. I thought this was about me. He’d be curious. We were reconnected; we’d start over. I told him about Drake, cited their home record, described being down late on the road and rallying, how clutch I was, the crowd, how I couldn’t hear anything anymore, and I wanted to tell him something about something else, something equally important about something I was sure he’d want to know, but—

  Listen, he said. I have some news.

  Tell me, I said.

  He told me. He had AIDS.

  What does that mean? I asked.

  It means what you think it means.

  How long have you had it?

  Since 1980 or ’82, he said. Full-blown since ’87. You’re not in any danger, if that’s what you’re thinking. Son? What are you thinking?

  I don’t know.

  Do you have any questions for me?

  I could think of a few, but they all seemed mean now and petty.

  You can ask me anything you want, he said.

  And then I understood he wanted me to ask the kinds of questions people ask when you offer them news like this, but I didn’t know those kinds of questions.

  Son, he said. Do you know anything about it?

  I know about Magic Johnson, I said. People die. Everyone dies, right? You don’t recover from it, right? It’s terminal?

  First you’re positive. You can live positive. I’ve lived a long time positive. A long, long time. When you start losing T cells, you get the disease. Run out of T cells and you die.

  How many T cells do you have left?

  Less than twenty.

  What does that mean?

  It means what I said.

  You’re going to die?

  Yes.

  How long do you have?

  A few months. Maybe less.

  A few months.

  Maybe less.

  And?

  Son, he said. I’ve lived a good life. I’m okay with it. I have no regrets. Not one.

  * * *

  WHAT HAPPENS IN THESE PLACES is you get very good at Ping-Pong and blowing O-rings. There’s a vernacular to a treatment center, we called it TC talk; we’re all well versed in it by now. Alone time was rare, efficiency critical: we could all beat off in less than a minute. We war-storied about drugs and booze, sex, money, violence; 95 percent of it was spot-on bullshit, and yet all of it was 100 percent true. Almost no one talked about being salutatorian or testing in the ninety-ninth percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic What-have-you. No one bragged on their parents’ hopes anymore or described the long-ago dreams of taking over the family business or running for political office one day
. Our former potential was shameful now. I grew watchful, studious: how could I get out of here? I worked the steps they gave me. I learned things. On the outside, cool meant a fast car, expensive shades, a hot chick, a dope fade, but in here it meant appraising a situation before it could appraise you.

  Fuck it. If I talked, maybe they’d let me out. So I talked. I cried. I wrung my hands. A strange thing happened. I began sleeping better. Quickly, from shared misery and parallel existences, relationships developed so thickly bonded I felt sure I’d know these boys forever; we made plans on the outs to drop acid in the Angeles, Joshua Tree, Half Dome, and in the rocks above the Yuba, or some guy had a brother whose girlfriend’s best friend’s boyfriend had an ethereal connect for sheets, elbows, and vials of the purest meth in the entire central San Joaquin. But true to this thing’s nature, the child actor disappeared within a week of my arrival, and most the other boys left soon after.

  For now I reveled in that feel-sorry-for-me muck, expecting everyone else to do so as well. Oh, hey, I thought they’d say, never mind. The dude has every reason. He’s right. No one’s ever loved him. Let’s give him a break. He’s clearly different. And yet the night after revealing my father’s illness, I woke up with shaving cream coating my face and the young boy spastically dancing about. In the bathroom, while cleaning myself, I considered beating him senseless. But can you beat someone who doesn’t care about pain? No. You have to kill them. I searched for some dental floss to pull through his throat, but there was none. Outside I lit a cigarette, stared at the sky. Here were stars on top of stars on top of stars, all backlit by numerous galaxies. Is that a bear? Is it a hunter hunting a bear? What was I thinking? Would guillotining this fool further my goals? No. From then on, whenever he came skulking along, pockets full of rocks and shit to throw, I’d simply open a pack of cigarettes and offer whatever. Here’s a dollar or fifty cents. Here’s a pen, it’s all I’ve got. Want my sandwich? A hat? Are you tired? Can I rub your feet?

  He terrified me, but in their own way, they all did.