Brad wanted to become a lawyer and I wanted to write history books.
“Feel it,” he said, his voice low, rocking back and forth. “Feel how it’s strangling us?”
I felt it. If we didn’t go to State, then next summer we’d be on that slippery slope where we couldn’t get off, a life at the mill, a life of praying and hoping for a nickel-an-hour wage increase, of waiting for the five o’clock whistle. A life where we would find our friends and amusement at the Legion Hall, Drakes Pub, or Pete’s Saloon, where we would sit comfortable on the barstools, swapping stories about who scored what winning touchdown at what state tournament, sipping our beers and feeling ourselves and our tongues getting thick with age and fear. Just getting along, getting older and slower, the old report cards with the perfect marks hidden away in some desk drawer, buried under old bills, a marriage certificate, and insurance policies.
“We gotta get out,” I said.
“We do. And I know how.” Brad had gotten to his feet, brushing potato-chip crumbs from his pants. “Monroe, we’re going to become thieves.”
The next day we were at Outland Rock, tossing pebble’s into the river. We were upstream from the mills, and the waters flowed fast and clean. About another mile south, after the river passed through town, the waters were slow and slate-gray, clogged with chemical foam and wood chips and scraps of leather. Outland Rock was a large boulder that hung over the riverbank. We were too lazy to swim, so we sat and tossed pebbles into the river, watching the wide arcs of the ripples rise up and fade away.
“What are we going to steal?” I asked. “Gold? Diamonds? The bank president’s Cadillac?”
Brad was on his stomach, his feet heading up to the bank, his head over the water. “Don’t screw with me, Monroe. I’m serious.”
I shook my head, tossing another rock in. “OK, so you’re serious. Answer the question.”
“Cash.” He had a stick in his hand, a broken piece of pine, and he stirred it in the water like he was casting for something. “Anything else can be traced. We steal cash and we’re set.”
The day was warm and maybe it was the lazy August mood I was in — the comfortable, hazy feeling that the day would last forever and school and September would never come — but I decided to go along with him.
“OK, cash. But you gotta realize what we’re working with.”
He looked up at me, his eyes unblinking behind the thick glasses. “Go ahead, Monroe.”
“Our parents still won’t let us drive by ourselves, so we’re stuck with our bikes. Unless you want to steal a car to get out of town — which doubles the danger. So whatever we go after has to be in Boston Falls.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“There’s another thing,” I said. “We can’t go into the National Bank or Trussen’s Jewelers in broad daylight and rob em. In an hour they’d be looking for two kids our age and they wouldn’t have a hard time tracking us down.” I lay back on the rock, the surface warm against my back, and closed my eyes, listening to some birds on the other side of the river and the swish-swish as Brad moved the stick back and forth in the water.
“Burglary,” he said. I sat up, shading my face with one hand. “Burglary?”
“Yeah. We find someone who’s got a lot of cash and break into their house. Do it when no one’s home and they’ll blame it on some drifters or something.”
Somewhere a dog barked. “Do you realize we’re actually talking about stealing, Brad? Not only is it a crime, but it’s wrong. Are you thinking about that?”
He turned to me and his face changed — I had the strange feeling I knew what he’d look like in ten years.
“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.