The Best American Noir of the Century

Brad and I worked in the packing room, piling up cardboard boxes of shoes and dodging the kicks and punches from the older men who thought we were moving too slow or too sloppily. We usually got off at three, and after buying a couple of cans of 7-Up or Coke and a bag of Humpty Dumpty potato chips we hiked away from the mills up Mast Road to the top of Cavalry Hill, which looked over the valley where Boston Falls was nestled. Well, maybe nestled’s too nice a word. It was more tumbled in than nestled in.

On that day, we both wore the standard uniform of the summer, dark green T-shirts, blue jeans, and sneakers. We were on an exposed part of the hill, past the town cemetery, looking down at the dirty red-brick mill buildings with the tiny windows that rose straight up from both sides of the Squamscott River. Steam and smoke fumes boiled away from tall brick stacks, and neither of us really had gotten used to the pungent, oily smell that seemed to stay right in the back of the throat. The old-timers never mind the smell. They sniff and say, “Aah,” and say, “Boys, that’s the smell of money.” We weren’t so dumb that we didn’t know if Devon Shoe and Parker Shoe and the lumberyard shut down, Boston Falls would crumple away like a fall leaf in November.

But Brad never liked the smell.

“God,” he said, popping open his can of soda. “It seems worse today.”

“Wind’s out of the south,” I replied. “Can’t be helped.”

Our bikes were on their sides in the tall grass. There was a low buzz of insects and Brad took a long swallow from his soda, water beading up on the side of the can. It was a hot day. Brad’s long hair was combed over to one side in a long swoop, and I was jealous of him because my dad made me keep my hair about two inches long, with no sideburns. But then again, Brad wore thick glasses and my vision was perfect.

“Brad,” I said, “we’re in trouble.”

He tossed his empty soda can over his shoulder. “How are you doing?”

“With the sixty from last week, I got four hundred and twelve.”

“Idiot. You should have four hundred and fifteen like me. Where’s the other three?”

“I had to buy a dress shirt for Aunt Sara’s funeral last week. I tore my last good one in June and Mom’s been bugging me.”

“Mothers.” Brad hunched forward and rested his chin on his knee.

“State says we need at least a thousand for the first year.”

“Yeah.”

“And we can’t get part-time jobs this winter, there won’t be any around.”

“Yeah.”

“So what do we do?”

“I’m thinking. Shut up, will you?”

I let it slide, knowing what he was thinking. We were both six hundred dollars’ short for the first-year tuition at the state college. My dad had made some brave noises about helping out when the time came, but six months ago my oldest brother Tom had wrapped his ‘68 Chevy around a telephone pole and now he was wired up to a bed in a hospital in Hanover and my parents’ bank account was shrinking every month. But at least my father had offered to help. Brad’s father usually came home drunk from the mill every night, sour-mad and spoiling for a light. I’d slept over Brad’s house only once, when we were both fourteen and had just become friends. It was a Friday night, and by midnight Brad’s father and mother were screaming and swinging at each other with kitchen knives. Brad and I snuck out to the backyard with our blankets and pillows and we never talked about it again. But one day Brad came to school with his face lumpy and swollen from bruises, and I knew he must have told his father he wanted to go to college.

“Monroe,” he said, finally speaking up.

“Go ahead.”

“We’re special people, aren’t we?”

“Hunh?”

“I mean, compared to the rest of the kids at school, we’re special, right? Who’s at the top of the class? You and me, right?”

“Right.”

“So we’re special, we’re better than they are.”

“Oh, c’mon —”

“Face it, Monroe. Just sit there and face it, will you? That’s all I ask right now. Just face it.”

Well, he was somewhat right, but then you have to understand our regional high school, Squamscott High. Kids from Boston Falls, Machias, and Albion go there, and those other towns are no better off than ours. And in our state there’s little aid for schools, so the towns have to pay the salaries and supplies. Which means a school building with crumbling plaster ceilings. Which means history books that talk about the promise of the Kennedy administration and science books that predict man will go into space one day. Which means teachers like Mr. Hensely, who stumbles into his afternoon history classes, his breath reeking of mouthwash, and Miss Tierney, the English teacher, not long out of college, who also works Saturday and Sunday mornings as a waitress at Mona’s Diner on Front Street.

“All right, Brad,” I said. “I guess we’re special. We study hard and get good marks. We like books and we want to go places.”