The Boy in the Tunnel

by Gardner Linn

6.

You should clean the bathroom. What has it been, a month? Two? There are things growing in there. You kept the silverfish at bay for a while, but now they’re regrouping and they seem to have a plan. The silverfish are strategizing, and you’re sitting there in the same underwear you wore yesterday.

You try to remember going to work this week. Wasn’t Friday just yesterday? You feel like you accomplished nothing. Like, in terms of what the company as a whole accomplished last week, there would be no noticeable difference between the work that was done with you and the work that could have done without you. Your main function in going to work now is to say that you went, to prove that you dragged yourself in one more day. That’s what you’re getting paid for: the act of going to work. Once you’re there, it’s a breeze. A numbing breeze that makes you hate yourself, but a breeze nonetheless. The hard part is getting there. That’s where you earn your paycheck, on that 45-minute drive into downtown Atlanta. It’s not a bad hourly rate, if you think about it like that.

You should really clean the bathroom. You tell yourself you will, once there’s a reason to. Joanie was a reason. Before she came over, every time you were down on your knees scrubbing that toilet. You went through so many bottles of 409. That bathroom had never been so clean. Now look at it. Where did all that dust and hair come from? How does one person produce that much filth? Look at the shelf. Just overflowing with magazines. Maxim? You’re reading that? Is that who you are now? The kind of guy who reads Maxim on the toilet and doesn’t clean his bathroom? Why don’t you just go put on a football jersey and sweatpants and die?

7.

Drew had lost his temper once before, in high school. Let’s be honest: he had lost his temper many times in high school, and participated in more than his share of fights, but it was only the one time that had landed him in jail. This is not that story. This is the story you need to know before you hear that story.

Drew was a male cheerleader—the only male cheerleader at Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings High School, and you might think that would have made him a target for the jocks and the rednecks, but it had actually made him something of a celebrity. Until his junior year, Drew had been a tight end on the football team—the only freshman or sophomore to start on the varsity squad—and was generally acknowledged as the driving force that led the team to its first ever state championship. He was the most popular guy in school, by all accounts.

Drew’s becoming a cheerleader was the result of a drunken wager made at a party at second-string quarterback Kevin Novicki’s lakehouse in the summer between Drew’s sophomore and junior years. Both boys, freshly sixteen and gifted by their parents with new pickup trucks, had spent the evening getting plastered off a bottle of Jägermeister.

“Das ist des Jägers Ehrenschild.”

“I heard there’s deer blood in this.”

“Probably.”

“Deer blood is delicious.”

“How the hell do you pronounce this second line? That’s not even a real letter.”

“Crazy-ass Germans.”

And so this continued for a while until Kevin had the bright idea that they should see whose birthday truck was the fastest.

“It’s mine.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s mine.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re full of shit.”

“Wanna bet?”

“That you’re full of shit? I win.”

“If you don’t think your little pussy Ranger can handle it...”

“Fine. Fifty bucks?”

“Come on.”

“Daddy won’t give you the money?”

“No.”

“Fine. How about this: the loser has to quit the team and try out for cheerleading.”

“That’s fucking retarded.”

It was fucking retarded, but they both had enough Jägermeister in them to convince them otherwise, and once everybody else at the party got wind of the bet, it was a foregone conclusion.

They drove their trucks—Drew’s Ranger and Kevin’s tank-like F-150—side by side around the lake on the gravel road that connected all the lakehouses. Their headlights fought for supremacy in front, and the gravel shot out from behind their trucks like bullets, striking down the partygoers foolish to run after the trucks as they took off. Once the party left their rearview mirrors, Drew and Kevin and their trucks were the only creatures on the road, the only things alive in the night above water.

Drew was drunk, but he knew Kevin was drunker. He had also seen enough After-School Specials and listened to enough Jan & Dean to know how these things usually ended. He kept pace with Kevin, but always stayed a few yards behind, the goal to let Kevin win and hope that he would have forgotten about their wager when he woke up.

Drew and Kevin pushed their trucks into the curve around the far end of the lake. From the party at Kevin’s house, all anyone could see was a faint cone of light briefly illuminating a few yards of the shore at a time. The growl of the trucks was inaudible over the crackle of the bonfire and the chatter of the kids all pretending to be experienced. Kevin’s girlfriend Camille walked up to the shore to look out across the lake at the curving light in the distance. A bullfrog croaked and plopped into the water a few feet away, producing ripples that spread to her feet. She was tired of Kevin. She had kissed Drew impulsively seven months earlier, at the Sonic after a game, when Kevin was sick. It had spooked Drew and driven him away, but lately she had seen signs that made her think he was ready for her now. She had hoped that this party could be a kind of turning point for them, but it had not gone as she had planned. And now things were going even further awry.

As the trucks turned into the home stretch, Kevin started swerving erratically, clipping Drew’s side mirror. Drew pumped the brake, letting Kevin get ahead of him. Kevin saw what he was doing and slowed down his own truck, letting Drew pull up alongside him. Kevin shouted through the open windows:

“You’re not letting me win, asshole! I’m gonna beat your ass fair and square!”

Drew stepped on the gas, pulling ahead of Kevin, hoping that would appease him. Kevin whooped and sped forward, kicking gravel into Drew’s windshield. If that’s the worst that happens tonight, he thought, consider it lucky. The bonfire and his cheering friends were getting larger in the windshield as he approached the finish line.

A second later and Drew stopped, seeing that Kevin had already crossed the finish line. The mob crowded around Kevin’s truck, cheering drunkenly. They pulled Kevin out of the cab and lifted him, swaying, to their shoulders. They were treating Kevin like a conquering hero, and Kevin loved it. He pointed at Drew and grinned, then raised both hands and wiggled his spread fingers, cheerleader-style. Drew hoped to god Kevin would forget about this in the morning.

The crowd ran out of steam and lowered Kevin to the ground. He looked around for Camille, wanting to share this victory with her. He saw her standing alone by the lake. He walked over to her and put his arm on her shoulder. She shrugged it off.

Drew watched all this from his truck, like a movie projected onto his windshield. Kevin grabbed Camille’s shoulder, and she pulled away more forcefully. Kevin’s face was a mixture of rage and need. He looked younger than Drew had ever seen him. Camille pointed at Drew. Oh shit, Drew thought. Camille started walking toward his truck. Kevin looked at Drew, and it was not a look of hatred or malice. He looked as though he had found a purpose.

Camille got into Drew’s truck. “Oh my god I don’t know what I just did. I told him about what happened at the Hickory House. I don’t know...”

Drew watched as Kevin got back into his own truck and drove away, hitting the mailbox on his way out of the driveway.

Drew turned to Camille. “Get out of the truck.”

“What?”

“Get out.”

“Aren’t you listening to me? I broke up with Kevin for you.”

Drew looked at Camille, her sad, round face, scared and hopeful and thrilled to be rid of something she no longer wanted. She had kissed him, true, and he had let her kiss him and kissed her back, but at the time a thought had entered his head: You can’t do this to your best friend. He didn’t know where that thought came from. It was in a voice that was his but not his. Maybe he had heard it in a movie. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t do that to his best friend (first of all, whether or not Kevin was his “best friend” was debatable, and second of all, Kevin and Camille had been going out all of three weeks, and if you look at it objectively, they were all fifteen years old for Christ’s sake, and it’s not like Kevin and Camille were fucking betrothed or anything), he just knew that he was supposed to feel like he couldn’t do that to his best friend. So he didn’t.

But now she had chosen him over Kevin and sent Kevin away, drunk, into the night, and she had gotten into Drew’s pickup, unbidden. Drew didn’t know if he wanted her. He wanted someone, and she was as good as anyone else.

Drew put the Ranger into park and turned the ignition off. He leaned into Camille and she leaned into him and then their mouths were together and then

*******************

Drew woke up in the back of his truck, naked and alone, covered by his sleeping bag, unzipped into a blanket. A few of his classmates slept in chalk-outline poses around the smolders of the bonfire. The morning was grey but the air was already hanging like a hot wet towel, and Drew’s body was slick with a mixture of dew and sweat.

He saw his jeans near his feet and pulled them on. He climbed out of the truck. Wilson Esquivel, starting offensive tackle, looked up at the noise, registered that the shirtless figure was Drew, and rolled over on his belly, already asleep again.

Drew couldn’t see Camille anywhere. He checked the cab of his truck for a note or evidence and found only her underwear, which he put in his pocket, for a reason he wasn’t able to articulate.

He thought maybe Camille had gone inside to sleep, so he went into the house to look for her. The living room was empty. He walked down the hall to the bedrooms. One of the doors was closed. He knocked and pushed the door open. Someone was hidden under the comforter.

“Camille?”

Danny Hall (fullback) jerked awake, knocking the comforter off him and Adam King (halfback), still asleep. Danny’s eyes were panicked. “Drew...”

“My mistake.” Drew closed the door and jogged out of the house. Adam and Danny? Drew had kind of seen that coming.

Camille wasn’t in the house. Drew walked back out on the porch and surveyed the yard. Her Jetta was gone. She was gone.

No, wait. Of course the Jetta wasn’t here. She had come with Kevin. He hadn’t let her drive herself anywhere in six months. That was probably part of what had happened last night.

Drew walked around the house to the back deck, his bare feet squelching on the long wet grass. He thought maybe she had sought out one of the lounge chairs, more comfortable than the bed of his truck.

She hadn’t.

Drew walked back around to the front, put on his shoes and started the Ranger. He pulled out of the driveway, making sure not to hit the mailbox that Kevin had knocked over. He drove slowly down the narrow Lakeshore Drive, looking for Camille, maybe walking home for some reason he couldn’t fathom.

He had only gone a half-mile when he found her. She was standing in the middle of the road, barefoot and wide-eyed. She seemed to be glowing red in the dim morning light.

Drew skidded to a stop a few yards from Camille. She slowly looked up at him, but it was as if she didn’t recognize him at all. Drew got out of the truck, and then he saw why she looked red.

Kevin’s truck was sticking out of the ditch at the side of the road, the back end in the air, the taillights throwing a red glow on Camille. Drew ran past Camille to the driver’s door. Kevin’s head was slumped against the steering wheel. He almost looked asleep. Drew opened the door and nudged Kevin’s shoulder.

“Kevin?”

Then Drew saw Kevin’s forehead, which was now concave. Blood trickled out of Kevin’s nose.

Drew felt for a pulse on Kevin’s neck. He was dead.

Drew turned back to Camille, still standing in the middle of the road, in shock. She was still faintly glowing red. Everything Drew saw was red. He walked up to Camille. She looked at him, the blank expression on her face unchanging.

Drew hit her in the face as hard as he could. She crumpled to the asphalt.

A month later, Drew told Coach Thompson he was quitting the football team.

© 2005 Gardner Linn