"He doesn't even notice."

"He puts his naked a.s.s on that rug, you know."

"Roll up your window."

"Check the glove compartment. My pops should have a cig in there."

Pervert came out with a loose Marlboro and pulled a piece of paper from Ernie's notebook: Kevin Klausen's homework. "That kid's an a.s.shole, Ernie. Why do you do his s.h.i.t?"

"You have no idea what it's like to get sat on in front of all the girls in gym."

"Weren't you guys friends for a while?"

"Supposedly, for about a week, until I became a loser."

"Like me." Pervert pinched the tobacco out of the cigarette and started tearing open roaches onto the back of Kevin's homework. "Go down Kettle Run. There's a place used to be a Girl Scout camp."

"We got time?"

"You got study hall first period and I got gym, and I'm excused." Pervert refilled the empty paper tube with shake and pushed in the lighter k.n.o.b. They saw the decaying wooden sign for the Girl Scout camp and Ernie pulled the Buick behind an old bunkhouse by the river.

"Roll down your window so our clothes don't smell."

"Your clothes always smell, Ernie."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, like Fidel Castro's crotch."

They blazed, Pervert alternating hits with the inhaler. The sun and the weed made the maple burn redder. Pervert climbed out of the Buick. "We still got some time, right?"

"Took us twenty minutes to come out here and now it's quarter to ten."

"Don't turn this into f.u.c.kin' algebra homework, Ernie, just tell me whether I've got time to take a s.h.i.t."

"What! Where?"

"Over there in those trees."

"How you going to wipe?"

"Whatever ain't poison ivy."

"You sure you know the difference?"

Pervert went singing around the back of the bunkhouse. "Leaves of three, let'm beeeee ..."

At the time Ernie didn't think twice about it, but Pervert took so long they would end up late for second period. "Jesus, Pervert, took you for f.u.c.kin' ever."

"Rome wasn't built in a day."

"What'd you use to wipe?"

"Kevin Klausen's algebra."

"What!" Ernie punched his arm. "You a.s.shole!"

Pervert wrapped his arms around his head and curled up squirming in the pa.s.senger seat. "Peace! Peace! Peace!"

A day later they're back at Girl Scout camp and Ernie watches Pervert. He wants to look Pervert in the eye, but Tull is holding him tight by his jacket collar shaking him and shouting in his face, "Little s.h.i.t! Where's the rest?"

Pervert is shivering, crying. "There ain't no rest." A wet spot spreads down the leg of his jeans and Ernie looks away.

Keith gives Ernie a drowsy look. "You follow us out here yesterday?"

"No."

"You sayin' your friend did it alone?" No. That isn't it, either. But Ernie isn't in a position to contradict. Keith speaks up to the sky. "The way I see it, one of 'em or both of 'em is lyin'. And they ain't been sellin' it yet cuz the s.h.i.t ain't cured. So somewhere there's about six pounds of pot we can still get back into the rightful hands." Tull, with his gaze fixed on p.i.s.s-pants Pervert, is intent on Keith as if listening to his own inner voice. "Why don't you have a talk with that one and I have a talk with this one and the first one to tell us the truth gets to see his mommy again? I'm sure when these kids see what a bad choice they made, we'll get back whatever they haven't already smoked. And then they can tell us about how they found it."

They break off like pairs of dance partners, Pervert with Tull and Ernie with Keith. Keith pulls Ernie by the wrist and leads him around the back of the bunkhouse, another twenty steps to a thick hedgerow that seems impenetrable, but Keith pushes aside a heap of vines and they duck into a small clearing in the trees.

Here they are, the gigantic cannabis plants, about twenty of them, all taller than Ernie and bearing big, beautiful buds with dark-purple hairs, getting irrigated from the river through siphons. Ernie can see three stunted plants. The stalks have been cut cleanly with a pocket knife near the top. n.o.body could expect this to go unnoticed, but it seems to have been done deliberately, with care: not brute vandalism, more like a t.i.the.

Keith sits Ernie gently on a stump and stands over him with one foot up like a cop confiscating firecrackers. "It's not a ton of money, when you consider all the work and worry, and I don't feel like harvesting today. Forecast puts first frost two weeks away. Let those plants bud another ten days and it doubles the take." He's not trying to be intimidating; Keith is just thinking out loud when he says, "It might end up better to keep you missing awhile."

Ernie's voice trembles. "I swear I won't tell anyone. I'll forget we ever came out here. Could I please have my keys?"

Keith answers very slowly. "We. Both. Know. That. Can't. Happen."

Ernie looks up at the abandoned Girl Scout bunkhouse as if something from this vestige of happier days might come to his aid, but the windows are long gone from the empty boxes and the bunkhouse looks down on the scene with hollow eyes. Suddenly he hears Pervert scream, "Wait! No!"

An explosion startles them both. For a second Ernie and Keith stand frozen looking at each other before Keith pushes through the vines and runs around the bunkhouse. Ernie follows.

When he comes around the front of the bunkhouse, Ernie sees Tull with his .44 standing over Pervert who's facedown on the ground, motionless, blood spreading a stain beneath his body, soaking the earth.

Keith speaks evenly: "Tull, you dumb f.u.c.k. You greasy, dumba.s.s f.u.c.k."

"The little s.h.i.t shouldn't've tried to run!"

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit, give me that f.u.c.kin' gun." Keith takes the weapon and goes to the truck. He comes back and hands Tull a shovel. "Dig."

"f.u.c.k that! Make this little s.h.i.t do it."

Keith doesn't have to repeat himself. The look he gives Tull is enough to say they will have to discuss it later. Tull shakes his head, starts digging. "s.h.i.t's f.u.c.ked up."

Ernie can't believe what he sees. A minute ago Pervert screamed and now Tull is digging a hole. He imagines Pervert's mom in town right now with her hair piled up in a beehive, thinking about Pervert by his real name, Morgan, washing his socks, washing his underwear, skidmarked Pervert underwear getting bleached for another day that will never happen. He imagines Pervert just yesterday knocked on his a.s.s in the woods behind Tull's trailer, that look of surprise on his face, squirming in the sticks and leaves, shouting, f.u.c.kin' awesome!

When they arrived late for second period yesterday, Ernie got b.u.mped from behind at his locker-Kevin Klausen.

"Where's my homework?"

"I cannot tell a lie. Pervert used it to wipe his a.s.s."

"He WHAT?"

"Tell Mr. Trees you lost it. I can redo it for him tonight."

"How did it get into Pervert's hands for him to wipe his a.s.s with?"

"I give him a ride to school some days."

"You f.a.gs b.u.t.t-f.u.c.k in the backseat that early in the morning? Next time you keep it in a binder or something. I don't need that punk knowing where my grades come from."

Ernie took the Visine, gave himself two drops in each eye, and he was ready for gym. He suited up even though it was asking for punishment. Mr. Connelly called roll military style. "alvarez, Ernesto."

"Here." The cool boys followed this with sneezes of Spic and coughs of f.a.ggot.

It was the day for dodgeball, a euphemism for Smear the Queer because that was how it worked out after teams got picked, the big jocks having a blast making the losers and f.a.ggots. .h.i.t the deck and taking bets on who could raise a redder welt.

Back at his locker, Ernie heard softly in his ear: "Hey, boat boy, I hear you do homework." A girl. Wait wait wait wait wait wait: Carleen Delmonte-Kevin's girl. She looked so good in those jeans, the ones with the little question mark on the pocket, it made Ernie's heart ache.

"Who said that?"

"Mr. Moore."

"The science teacher? He knows?"

"He told me, Connie-he thinks my name is Connie-if you need help with homework, ask the Spanish kid."

"Science, huh?"

"I'm not asking you to do it for me. I just need a little tutoring. You could come over."

I can come over, Ernie said to himself. Boat boy is coming over to Carleen Delmonte's house.

Ernie's father sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. His nose, marbled with wasted capillaries, poked out between tobacco-yellowed fingers. It was the afternoon hour when sense returned for just long enough to give him the idea to jettison it again, because all sense brought with it was recollections of other afternoons before exile made Ernie's mother crazy.

"Hey, Pops." His father parted his hands and waved his fingers. "Can I take the car tonight?"

"What you doing?"

"Studying for school tomorrow."

"Tomorrow Sat.u.r.day."

"Tomorrow's Friday."

"Okay, okay."

What was left for them? All his father wanted was to be left at home alone. Ernie was too old for hide-and-seek, and it had never been about playing fair, never his father's turn to seek. What was hidden were bottles, all sizes and colors, in toilet tank, shoe box, guitar case-these were the easy hiding places-inside breaker box, under toolbox tray, above ceiling panels, beneath linoleum tiles. His father would literally tear the house apart to hide them. Ernie used to feel triumph at finding one, but he had given up for the futility of ever winning, of beating the fatigue that was beating them both. And his father began leaving the empties around, not so much as a sign of conquest but of resignation: See, this is me. So it was almost as friends again that they recognized each other across the kitchen table yesterday afternoon: Let's be easy on each other today.

"Pops, when's it going to lift?"

"Hay cosas en la vida-los estresses, no?-que son demasiados soportar solo, pero uno las tiene que soportar. Comprendes?"

"Maybe you don't have to withstand them alone."

"Son mios. Son yo."

"We could talk about it." His father waved it away like always. It was understood that he genuinely lost his voice when the subject came up. Ernie believed him. It happened to him too. Hearts break slowly, which is why we can look tragic news in the eye at the moment of shocked certainty and say, This is happening to me. Got to face it or stab yourself in the heart, because no painkiller will ever lift without making you face it all over again. Ernie didn't have the courage to stab himself, and yet he wasn't sure he had the heart to face it, and n.o.body could tell him how long it was going to take. He couldn't even guess.

When he knocked on the door a large man answered, South Jersey redneck, shirtless, tattooed, a faded Confederate flag erupting from his chest. "What do you want?"

A woman called over the TV: "That's him, Larry, the tutor from Carleen's school."

"h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Delmonte."

"That's not my name, honey. Call me Glynnis." The mom was sunburned with a peroxide permanent, those same bright eyes as Carleen and still nicely built. "Come back to the couch, Larry, the 'mercial's over." Larry turned and walked back to the TV. h.e.l.lfire engulfed his big shoulders, flames licking the 609 on the back of his neck.

Carleen came out wearing those question-mark jeans and a close-fitting pink sweater. Her eyes were drowsy-pretty with a pencil twirled in her hair. She led Ernie back to her room, Prince hanging over her bed with his shirt off. "You got a curfew?"

"Nah. My dad doesn't give a s.h.i.t."

"What does he do?"

"Drink, since the divorce. My uncle moved us up here thinking he'd be able to turn him around, but so far nothing's changed except the weather. What about your dad?"

"No f.u.c.kin' idea."

"That's not him answered the door?"

"Who? f.u.c.khead? He's not my dad, but I've never known my mom without a boyfriend. Your mom got a boyfriend?"

"No. I mean, I don't think so. She's crazy down in Miami."

Ernie thought about her getting in trouble with the apartment manager. She would lock herself out and the man would let her in and see all these newspapers and half-empty cans piled up to the ceiling, smell bad odors coming from her room. Anyone crazy enough to go out with her was probably locked up in his own apartment somewhere. Maybe right next door.

They didn't talk for a minute while Carleen pulled out her books. She had sharpened three pencils to needle points and they sat there lined up beside the blue binder all her friends had signed and scribbled the initials of guys they liked on.

"How long you been going out with Kevin?"

"Like, never long."

"Really?"

"At Cherry Hill East, you got to look like you're going out with a jock or the cheerleaders call you d.y.k.e or s.l.u.t. I picked Kevin 'cause he doesn't try to touch me. Probably a f.a.g."

"Wow." Ernie had never thought of that.