The Best American Noir of the Century

“Don’t get soft on me, Monroe. In another three weeks we’ll be back at school. If we don’t get more money this summer we’re done for. ‘Wrong.’ Isn’t it wrong that you and me have to grow up in a place like this? Isn’t it wrong that we have to live alongside people who haven’t read a book in years? Don’t you think it’s wrong that for lack of a few measly bucks we have to rot here?”

He bent over the rock and pointed. “Look.” In the shallow water I saw a nesting of mussels, their shells wide open. “There you have,” he continued, “the population of Boston Falls, New Hampshire. Sitting still, dumb and happy and open, letting everything go by them, ready to snap at anything that comes within reach.” He pushed his stick into one of the mussels and it snapped shut against the wood. He pulled the stick out, the mussel hanging onto the stick, dripping water. “See how they grab the first thing that comes their way?”

He slammed the end of the stick onto the rock and the mussel exploded into black shards.

“We’re not going to grab the first thing that comes our way, Monroe. We’re going to plan and get the hell out of here. That will take cash, and if that means stealing from the fat, dumb mussels in this town, that’s what we’ll do.”

On the ride home, Brad slowed and stopped and I pulled my rusty five-speed up next to him. A thick bank of rolling gray clouds over the hills promised a thunderstorm soon. Our T-shirts were off and tied around our waists. I was tanned from working in our garden all summer but Brad was thin and white, and his chest was a bit sunken, like he’d been punched hard there and never recovered.

“Look there,” he said. I did and my stomach tightened up.

A dead woodchuck was in the middle of the road, its legs stiff. Two large black grackles hopped around the swollen brown body, their sharp beaks at work.

“So it’s a burglary,” I said. “Whose house?”

He shrugged his bony shoulders. “I’ll find the right one. I’ll go roaming.”

Roaming. It was one of Brad’s favorite things to do. At night, after everyone at his house was asleep, he would sneak out and roam around the dark streets and empty backyards of Boston Falls. The one time I’d gone with him, I thought he was just being a Peeping Tom or something, but it wasn’t that simple. He just liked watching what people did, I think, and he moved silently from one lighted window to another. I didn’t like it at all. I wasn’t comfortable out on the streets or in the fields at night, and I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was trespassing.

Brad rolled his bike closer to the dead woodchuck. “Are you in, Monroe? We’re running out of time.”

Thunder boomed from the hills and I glanced up and saw a flash of lightning. “We better get going if we’re going to beat the storm.”

“I said, are you with me?”

The wind shifted, blowing the leaves on the trees in great gusts. “Brad, we gotta get moving.”

“You get moving,” he said, his lips tense. “You get moving wherever you’re going. I’m staying here for a bit.”

I pedaled away as fast as I could, pumping my legs up and down, thinking, I’ll save a bit here and there, maybe deliver some papers, maybe just work an extra summer — there’s got to be another way to get the money.

* * *

A week later. Suppertime at my house. My brothers Jim and Henry had eaten early and gone out, leaving me alone with my parents. My brother Tom was still in the hospital in Hanover. My parents visited him every Saturday and Sunday, bringing me along when I wasn’t smart enough to leave the house early. I guess you could say I loved my brother, but the curled-over, thin figure with wires and tubes in the noisy hospital ward didn’t seem to be him anymore.

We sat in the kitchen, a plastic tablecloth on the table, my mother, looking worn and tired, still wearing her apron. My dad wore his shirt and tie. His crewcut looked sweaty and he smelled of the mill. On his right shirt pocket was a plastic penholder that said parker does it right with four pens. Supper was fried baloney, leftover mashed potatoes, and canned yellow string beans. I tried to talk about what went on at the mill that day—a pile of boxes stuffed full of leather hiking boots had fallen and almost hit me — but my parents nodded and said nothing and I finally concentrated on quietly cleaning my plate. The fried baloney left a puddle of grease that flowed into the lumpy white potatoes.

My father looked over at Mom and she hung her head, and he seemed to shrug his shoulders before he said, “Monroe?”

“Yes?”

He put his knife and fork down and folded his hands, as if we were suddenly in church.

“At work today they announced a cutback.” He looked at me and then looked away, as if someone had walked past the kitchen window. “Some people are being laid off and the rest of us are having a pay cut.”

“Oh.” The baloney and potatoes were now very cold.

“Tom is still very sick, and until he — gets better, we still have to pay the bills. With the cutback — well, Monroe, we need the money you’ve saved.”