Daredevils by Matthew Simmons
Daredevils
I thought I would find Swenson on the trails and drive a nail into his hand. He had called my little brother a very bad name, and as he was getting off the bus he hit him on the top of the head with the flat of his right hand. My brother, Lee, started crying but I didn’t have time to react before Swenson got off the bus. Swenson had his smirk—we could see him through the bus window just smirking, and then waved up at us as we drove by. I wanted to get off and follow him, but the bus driver wouldn’t let us because it wasn’t our stop. "I can't legally," she said. "I can't legally let you off my bus unless you are at your official, designated spot. I could get sued. Sued in court."
I had a long nail I’d found when Lee and I went to the construction site where they’re building the house next to us. I thought we should get Swenson alone, gang up on him, hold him down, and drive the nail into his right hand, so that when it ached, he’d remember that it was the hand he used to hit my brother.
§
Nights earlier, we're all sitting together at the dinner table, pawing and grabbing at the food in front of us when my oldest brother Gary elbowed Lee so hard, Lee spit milk into his own lap. Of us four kids, none had waited for the prayer, and Dad had the look on his face. Gary was the first to notice the look, so he was the one who gave an elbow to Lee, second youngest. The elbow settled rough into the divot of Lee’s armpit—he reaching over the table for another fish stick—and Lee let out this breath/grunt combo sort of noise. It got everyone’s attention, and then we saw Gary seeing Dad, and the look on Dad’s face. The disappointed look. Dad, brow furrowed under his balding head; flat, rigid nose pointing straight out at Gary; tiny brown eyes tinier and tinier.
When we saw Gary, and saw that he was looking over at Dad, we knew Dad was waiting for the prayer.
Mom, she just stood in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, her boyfriend’s arm around her waist. I’m pretty sure she rolled her eyes. I'm pretty sure he rolled his eyes first.
It wasn’t every night we had dinner with Dad. He was only over at Mom’s boyfriend’s house with us every other Saturday. Because of that, the kids—the three boys, the girl—were prone to forget that before we ate with Dad, there was always the prayer. Dad’s expectation—that his kids would, when they found themselves fortunate enough to have another meal provided for them, that when they sat down at a table and prepared to eat, they would offer a prayer to God for allowing there to be another meal. It was an expectation of his that this was something we would always do, whether he was there or not; for the rest of our lives, we would offer the prayer and count ourselves lucky.
Gary bowed his head first and had the best memory for the routine. Lee followed, and then around the table it went, from Lee to me. From me to Katie. When it made the circuit, Dad bowed his head. He spoke clear and we followed if we could. Lee and Katie, the two youngest, eleven and five, couldn’t. “Lord Jesus Christ, friend of sinners, we thank you for friendship, prince of peace, we ask you that we may be peacemakers. Lord of all, we thank you for this food. Bless it to our bodies, we pray. Amen.”
“Amen,” we said.
After dinner, Lee and I went to the hill in the backyard, where we’d dug up a track for our Hot Wheels cars. Some of it was the orange plastic track I got for my birthday. Some of it was dirt—we’d ripped up the grass at the root, pulled out little stones. We’d dug a hole, too, and Lee grabbed the hose and filled it with water. The hole opened at the end, and the opening was covered with a piece of beaver board we took from the construction site next to the house. I pushed a car around on the dirt track, up to the top of the hill.
“Blow the dam when I give the old say so,” I said. Lee said okay, and I put the car on the track.
“Ready?” I said.
Lee said yeah.
“Now!” I said, letting go of the car. It rolled down the track, and Lee pulled the board away, making a kaboosh explosion noise with his mouth. The water poured out the hole, as the car skittered down the track. A stream of the water crossed the track, but the car beat it by a few seconds. “Evel Knievel does it again!” I said to the television audience. Lee whooped.
“Refill the dam,” I said. “Let’s try it again, but this time, we’ll blow it earlier.”
Lee said yeah in that way he does.
“Can Evel Kneivel survive?” I said to my television audience.
They thought probably.
“Someday,” I said to Lee, “it’ll be us in the car.”
Lee scratched at the dry skin on his ankle, and said OK. In that way he does that, too.
§
Mom had sat down with me when the breakup happened. She said it was very important that I never, ever cry, and I never, ever have. She and I got a shoebox from the basement, and we cut a slot in the top. In the slot, I was supposed to put notes. She said it was like at work, when someone puts up an employee comment box. I was supposed to make comments, and she would read them. And if there was something important in them, she would have a meeting with me about it later.
A couple of days after she put the box up, and told the other kids about it, too, mom’s boyfriend—who had sort of moved in to make sure Dad didn’t come around while Mom got her stuff packed and we could move—took it down.
Eventually, we went to Mom’s boyfriend’s house to live, and Dad was allowed to visit after he proved that he could do it without causing a fuss.
§
Mom’s boyfriend came out into his backyard, and when he saw what Lee and I had done to the lawn, he kind of freaked.
He said some words Dad would never say.
He was mad because we had dug the hole on the side of his hill, and we pulled up some of his grass to make a dirt trail up to the orange track. He asked whose idea it was, and Lee says it was his—even though we both sort of came up with it. Then Mom’s boyfriend smacked Lee.
Dad heard the commotion, and all the swearing. He came out to see what was going on. He told Mom’s boyfriend to not ever take the Lord’s name in vain around his kids, but Mom’s boyfriend didn’t hear it because he was too busy yelling at Lee. When Mom’s boyfriend hauled off and hit Lee in the mouth, Dad came up behind him and gave him a shove. Mom’s boyfriend stumbled forward, and he fell on top of Lee, who was crying from the smack. Mom’s boyfriend got up, and Dad was standing over him.
Dad’s taller than Mom’s boyfriend, but he doesn’t work out or anything like that. Mom’s boyfriend has big arms, and the way he talks, you can tell he gets into fights all the time when he goes out to bars. He wears a t-shirt, and his arms fill out the sleeves, and sort of stretch them. His legs aren’t as strong, but they’re still pretty large in his cutoff denim shorts. Dad had on the polo shirt, the blue one with a little alligator. His arms don’t fill out the sleeves at all. But, anyway, Dad didn’t back down when Mom’s boyfriend stood up and got in his face. And he didn’t really flinch when Mom’s boyfriend fake punched at him. He just stood there and said that he didn’t want the guy ever to say the Lord’s name in vain around his kids. It’s important to him, he said. "You know I love you," he said. "You take good care of my kids and my wife. I just want you to do that one thing for me."
When Mom’s boyfriend laughed and went over to the picnic table to grab a can of beer he left there, Dad walked to Lee and asked him about digging up the grass on the lawn. Lee said he did it, and I told Dad that I helped do it, too. Dad looked at me and thanked me for being honest.
Then he smacked me. He said we should both be punished equally for what we did, since we were both responsible. My eyes stung a little and I told him yes, he’s right, it’s only fair, when he asked if I agreed with him. Dad made us both go over and apologize to Mom’s boyfriend for what we did. Dad told us he was going to give our allowance directly to Mom’s boyfriend for the next couple of months, and that we were going to have to do all the yard work that we were told to do, and be like Mom’s boyfriend’s slaves until he said we were done.
§
About a week into living with Mom’s boyfriend, I got up to get some water after going to bed. Mom’s boyfriend’s house smells weird, like some kind of dry cheese. I was walking around with my water, and smelling to see if I could track down the source of the odor, but it was everywhere. It was just the way the entire house smelled.
I walked by the TV room, and heard Mom talking to her boyfriend. She was laughing and slurring her words, and so was he. “I guess I am kind of a slut, Clint,” she said. Then they both laughed more.
§
Our little sister Katie tried to follow Lee and me when we went out to ride bikes, but she was slow and on training wheels, so we managed to get away from her quick. She yelled as she pushed her pedals with her feet, and her sandals kept slipping off, and she shouted how Mom said we had to take her with, we had to take her with.
We cut through our neighbor’s yard and slipped onto one of the trails that circle and crisscross the neighborhood—The Bluffs—where we lived. We were riding over to our friend Kevin’s house, where we were going to pick him up, and have him come out and ride bikes, too. We were going to look for Swenson, who lived on the opposite side of The Bluffs, and was usually out riding the trails in the evening, just like us.
Lee had a forearm-long piece of rebar in his backpack. I had a long stick—a half a piece of axe handle—that my older brother Gary sanded and covered half in black duct tape as a grip. He drilled a hole in the end and tied a leather strap through it, so I had it hanging from my wrist, and it swung as we rode. It banged into my knee when we hit bumps.
We rode around and around, but didn’t run into Swenson until late, in the gray, gray evening. And when we did, he was with a couple of older boys who we thought were probably his brothers. We’d never met them. They were waiting on one of the trails, the three of them in a line blocking it so we couldn’t get by. One of the older boys had acne and a hooded sweatshirt with Escanaba Wrestling written on it in white letters. He asked us what we were doing, and Swenson shifted back and forth in his seat with that same smirk from earlier when he hit Lee.
“We’re just riding around,” I told him. He said it looks to him like we’re out trying to find trouble of some kind or another. The other older boy said it looked like that to him, too, what with me carrying the nigger knocker and all.
Lee whistled when the boy said the n-word. Dad had told him not to say that word anymore, even though Mom's boyfriend said it, and some of his special ed classmates said it.
The boy in the sweatshirt told him to shut up and asked what I had the club for.
I said: “I’m just carrying it. I’m bringing it home.”
The other older boy was in a black, sleeveless Metallica t-shirt, and had a collection of a dozen or so long stray hairs on his chin. He was grabbing them and pulling, twisting. He told me to let him see it and I said no. He said it again, saying give it fag, but I still didn’t offer him the bat, so he got off his bike and walked over to me. He said, seriously you little shit, let me see the nigger knocker. He grabbed at it with one hand and used he other to steady my bike. We each pulled, and he was stronger than me, but my wrist got caught on the leather strap. He got very close and he smelled like cigarettes. It took him some time to twist it from my fingers. “Cut it out,” I said.
He started to twist it, and the strap tightened around my wrist. It got tighter and tighter, and he kept pulling until I was pressed up against the handlebars and my hand turned purple. I wanted him to take it from me, but he’d twisted it so much it wouldn’t come off. My bike was slipping under me, and pulling me down while he pulled me forward. Lee shouted for him to stop. I was too focused on my wrist to notice what anyone else was doing, I just heard Lee’s yelling, and felt tingles in my hand. I was on one leg when my bike toppled to the side. That pulled me down, all but my hanging wrist. I tried to think about how I could twist myself out, and pull off an escape. But I couldn’t move and it hurt too much to think.
The older boy in the Metallica t-shirt let go, and my arm fell. And then my body fell completely. The handlebars jammed into my groin, and I started to feel sick from the pain. Metallica t-shirt reached down and unspun the strap, and pulled the club from my hand.
He took the club, and he hit a tree with it. It didn’t do much—just dented the bark—so he hit it again. And then again. He hit until one of he pulled a blow, and the end snapped off some of the bark. Cool, he said, and I’m keeping this, he said. Lee said something like you can’t because our brother made it.
Swenson and the boys rode off down the trail as I was getting up. I tried sit on my bike, but my groin still stung from hitting the handlebars, so I walked the bike out to the road, and walked all the way back home.
Lee followed, riding slowly, and in big circles around me. Kevin went the opposite way, riding back home. I wasn’t crying, because what had happened didn’t make me want to cry. Before Lee and I went in our Mom’s boyfriend’s house, I said, “I don’t think we should ever go back to school again,” and he agreed. So, we decided that the next day, and forever after, we were going to skip school.
Gary didn’t notice the missing club for a few more days. By then, we all have a lot more to think about.
§
Mom liked to buy books and videos for me and Lee about stunt drivers. She bought us red, white, and blue paints for gray, plastic car models, and helped us draw stars on them. She could always make the lines of the stars a lot straighter than we could. She bought Matchbox cars. We were going to drive fast someday. Very fast. One day you would find us in a car, throwing ourselves into the air.
We even went to a monster truck rally once. But we had to leave when the noise started to hurt Lee’s ears.
§
The morning after, with my wrist still sore, we left like we were going to meet the bus, but we didn’t. At the end of the block we went right instead of left. And into the trees. And past the trees to a trail we knew, and from the trail we went all the way to the railroad tracks. It was me and Lee.
At the tracks, we began to walk south. Around the tracks, there were piles of pig iron pellets. I grabbed one and rolled it around in my hand. We walked, heading out to the junkyard behind the paper mill.
There was an empty construction site. Lee and I walked into the house, just a blond wood frame at that point. It would be two floors, but the stairs weren't in yet. The north wall was finished, but the res was skeletal. It smelled like fresh cut wood. We hung from beams. We kicked over a sawhorse. Lee found a long nail and brought it to me.
He told me to look, look, and I stopped throwing rocks at the finished wall and looked. Lee handed the nail to me.
"This is nice," I said, holding the long, silver nail. "Looks deadly."
Lee smiled and tried to grab it back. "No," I said. "You might get hurt. I'll hold it."
Lee frowned and said he wouldn't in that way of his.
"You know what we're going to do with this?" I said. "We're going to drive this into Swenson's hand.
We're going to pierce right through his palm. We're going to nail him to something with this. You and me."
Lee agreed.
§
At night, the paper mill gave off a cloud of this rotten egg smell, but not during the day. All day we walked and talked. We decided that definitely when we saw Swenson alone on the trails, we were going to nail him up—as long as the older boys weren’t with him. We talked about how Swenson looked like some jerky little sitcom actor, the way his hair is blond and parted on the side. And the collared shirts, the short-sleeved collared shirts he wore every day. They were never wrinkled. On picture day, he wore a tie. He lived on the side of The Bluffs with the nice houses, the bigger houses with all the other rich people. He told everyone all the time how much his dad made, and everyone just had listened because their dad didn’t make as much.
"It’s not a contest," I told him once, but he said I only said that because my family was poor and my mom and dad were divorced. His family is Catholic, he said, and he told me my parents divorce was, like, the biggest sin possible, except for the sin of being queer bait. Which made me a sinner who was also the product of sin, he said.
§
This one time, Dad and Gary were fighting. Dad asked Gary why none of us ever told him about Mom’s boyfriend. “You all knew about it. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“We all like Mom better, Dad,” he said. He apologized later.
Lee told me he got on the bus and the older girl in front of him turned around and asked if he was a Taylor brother. “You’re a Taylor brother, aren’t you?” she asked. He nodded, and she got a look on her face like she wanted to pull his ear off with her teeth and spit it back at him. She turned, and mentioned my name to the girl next to her, and they laughed.
Lee had a chin like mine, with a little dent in it. He had a cowlick in the back of his head, around this whorl of hair. He sat in the bathroom before school combing it. He held the comb under the faucet and combed at the spot, trying to get the hair smooth against his head. A lock always remains pulled away, no matter how short or long his hair was. He couldn’t make it stick to his head, though he combed and combed. I used to have to do the same thing until I decided not to care anymore. After that, I gave Lee the can of foaming hair gel my mom bought for me. It never worked either, and I tried to tell Lee that. He didn’t listen. He kept combing. He got on the bus some mornings with a white dab of foam on his ear, or on the collar of his shirt. I tried to check before we get on, because I didn’t want anyone to notice and say something to him. Sometimes, I missed.
I gave Lee my round, mirrored sunglasses. He wore them until the legs broke off the hinges, and then Mom helped him to take a piece of stretchy thread, and tied them to his head.
§
Behind the paper mill, we found the junkyard. It was full of all the things the paper mill had gotten rid of, like broken swivel chairs and old computers. We found a keyboard in perfect shape, and put it in my bag. I said I thought I might be able to build myself a computer if I found a book at the Carnegie library, and came back out to find the parts. It would take me a while, but I had plenty of time.
I said that that made me the mechanic. If we were daredevils, me and Lee, I’d be the one who fixed up the cars and made sure the tricks worked by knowing math and angles. I’d know the speed we needed to get to if we were going to jump a line of cars.
And then I said Lee'd be the driver. He'd be the one who knew how to take the turns just right, how to fishtail, and ride on two wheels to get us through tight spots.
I’d sometimes flick a cigarette out the window, and it would hit a line of gas, and the flame would follow it to a car. The car would blow up.
I told Lee that he could also be the one who sits inside the little barrel covered in dynamite. Someone would light the wicks on the barrel, and after a few seconds, all the dynamite would explode. I told Lee he’d even have on a straight jacket, and be handcuffed to the bottom of the barrel, so everyone would know that he couldn’t get out. But he wouldn’t need to. I told Lee that all the dynamite would explode at the same time, and all the explosions would cancel each other out, and he’d be fine. And while the wicks were burning, he’d even get himself out of the straight jackets and the handcuffs.
We walked for a long time, at least until dusk.
Then Lee and I headed home. As we walked, I put my arm around him, and we walked crossing our feet in front of each other like the Monkees did at the beginning of their TV show.
We didn’t hear Swenson ride up until he was very close. We had to jump to get out of his way, and Lee landed in a sticker bush. Swenson road by, and skidded out, kicking dirt, turning to us. He laughed. “What are you, boyfriends?” Swenson said. “You were holding him and walking like he’s your boyfriend, Denny.”
“Shut up, Swenson. Fuck the hell off,” I said.
“You two are boyfriends. Fucking faggots,” Swenson said.
Lee was getting up, and I was getting up. Swenson was laughing. He stopped, though, when Lee hit him with a rock. He fell over on his bike. Lee started running at him, and I followed.
“Get him!” Lee said.
Swenson was tangled and couldn’t get up. Lee arrived first, and dropped on top of him. I came after. Lee sat on his chest, and pinned Swenson’s arms down with his knees. “Hold him down,” I said. “Hold him right there,” I said.
Swenson was next to a tree stump. His arm was right up against it. I pulled his arm, and laid it flat on top of the stump. The stump had been cut with a chain saw, probably. I had him by the wrist, and his palm was open in the center of the tree stump. I tried to put the hand so that the center of his palm was over the middle dot, inside of the rings. I did that with my left hand, and with my right I reached into my backpack. I rummaged around until I found the long nail at the bottom, below my books, below my pencil case. I held the nail in my hand, point down. “Hold him still,” I said to Lee.
“Get fucking off me. Get fucking off me,” Swenson said. He struggled. “Get fucking off me.”
“This is for you," I said.
I put the point of the nail into his palm, and I started to press. I started slow. I didn’t know how much pressure it would take to drive the nail into his hand and through to the tree stump. I didn’t know how strong I had to be to push the nail all the way into the tree stump, so far through that he would have to work the nail back and forth to dislodge it, so he could go home and bandage his hand.
I didn’t know if I was strong enough, but I pressed. Swenson yelled, and I pressed. He started to cry, and I pressed.
§
Dad came over for dinner on the weekends, but we never went over to his house. It was small. Too small. Too small for three brothers and a sister. Too small for the Taylor brood, which is what Dad called us. “Well, I’d love to have the whole Taylor brood over, but you’re just too many. Your mom and I probably should’ve been less enthusiastic about making you.”
So Dad came over to Mom’s boyfriend’s house every other weekend. He brought stuff for us. Gary liked music, so Dad brought him tapes by bands he thought were appropriate. Lee liked baseball, so Dad brought him a packet of baseball cards. Katie liked pretty much anything stuffed, so she got a stuffed animal. Dad brought me Christian comic books, because he thought the one’s I usually bought were too violent and Godless.
Mom always inspected the gifts after Dad left. She’d smirk, or she’d roll her eyes, or she say, “Well, this isn’t so bad, I guess.” If the gifts were disappointing, then she’d take us to ShopKo and we’d look for something, and—if it wasn’t too expensive— we’d get a “make-up gift.”
§
When a little trickle of blood sprung from the point of the nail, I jumped back. It was only a drop. It was only a very small dot of blood in the wrinkly surface of his hand. But I jumped back and dropped the nail. When I pushed myself back and fell on my butt, Lee looked at me. Lee looked at Swenson’s hand. It was starting to really bleed. Swenson thrashed, and Lee fell to the side. Swenson got up. He stared at his hand, blood waterfalling from the heel of his hand onto the ground, and then he started to moan. He grabbed his bike. His blood smeared on the handgrip. He got on the bike and pumped his feet, and went away down the trail, fast. Lee and I were still on the ground. We hadn’t moved. We listened to Swenson yelling as he rode home. He didn’t scream words. We didn’t hear words. We just heard a scream.
Lee started to laugh, and kept laughing all the way home. We took our time getting home, and when we got there, a police car was waiting in the driveway, and Mom was waiting in the driveway, and so was Mom’s boyfriend. Mom’s boyfriend was talking to a cop, and he was pointing this way and that.
Me, I thought about flicking a cigarette and blowing up the nearest cop car. Lee wasn’t afraid of the handcuffs at all, and held his arms out in front of him when the officer saw us.
***
About the Writer:
MATTHEW SIMMONS is the author of the novella A Jello Horse(Publishing Genius Press 2009). A chapbook called The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge and a story collection called Happy Rock will be published by Keyhole Press in 2010 and 2011 respectively.
Matthew Simmons lives and writes in Seattle, WA; find out more about him here: The Man Who Couldn't Blog.