The police arrived, and of course Mom woke up. She didn't know what was going on. She could only stand helpless in the kitchen doorway while the police questioned me, rounded up the drugs, and slapped handcuffs on Mark. They advised Mark of his right to remain silent, and he did. He just stood there, quivering, watching me while I told the cops the things that would put him behind bars for years.
Then a cop said, "Let's go, kid," and it seemed to dawn on Mark what was happening. He looked quickly from the cops to me and cried, "My God, Bryon, you're not gonna let them take me to jail?"
Didn't he know I had just put him there? The cop jerked Mark around and shoved him out the door. Suddenly it was deadly quiet--just the distant siren and Mom's quiet sobbing.
I went into the bathroom and threw up. I was sick.
11
The next morning I really thought that I had dreamed the whole thing. I thought I had had a nightmare, one I only vaguely remembered. It seemed a long time before it finally got through to me what had happened. Then I was tired and sick, and I wondered why people didn't die from being so mixed up.
Why had I turned on Mark? What had I done to him? I tried to remember how shook I had been about Cathy and M&M, tried to justify what I had done. But I didn't know now. If I had asked Mark to quit selling pills, he would have. I didn't have to do what I did. Last night it had seemed the only right thing to do. Now Mark was in jail. It would kill him. It would kill him.
It would kill him.
"Bryon, are you going to work?" It was Mom. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding my head in my hands. It felt like it was going to burst wide open.
"Mom," I said wearily, "what have I done? You don't hate me, do you?"
She came in and sat down on Mark's bed. "Bryon, you are my only child and my son and I couldn't hate you. I love you."
"You loved Mark, too," I said, only beginning to realize how this mess was going to affect her. Mark, her stray lion, behind bars.
"Yes, I loved Mark and I still do. But you are my son and you come first. What Mark was doing was wrong. Maybe the juvenile authorities can help him."
"You know they can't." I was too worn out to play games--let's pretend everything will turn out all right, let's pretend it's all for the better.
"We'll just have to make him understand it was wrong and that what you did was for his own good."
I took a good long look at her. She was my mother and I loved her, but there wasn't any sense in carrying on the conversation. She was tired and hurting, too, but she had hope and I didn't and we couldn't talk.
"I gotta get ready to go to work," I said.
"Bryon, don't hate yourself," Mom said, but that was easier said than done.
I went through the day mechanically, numb, and hardly knowing what I was doing. I had a rep as a wisecracker and a clown, so this got me a lot of ribbing, but I hardly heard it. I was glad to get home and lie on my bed, smoking one cigarette after another, not thinking--scared to think.
I heard someone at the door, but since Mom answered, I didn't pay any attention.
"Bryon, you have company," Mom finally called.
It was Cathy. It occurred to me with a shock that I hadn't thought about her all day long.
"Bryon, your mother told me what happened. I'm so sorry." She looked tired and nervous but I couldn't work up any sympathy for her.
"Are you?" I said "Why?"
"Bryon!" she said, tears jumping to her eyes. "You know I know how you feel!"
"Oh," I said. "No, I hadn't realized that."
She was quiet, bewildered. I knew I was hurting her, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. It was as if I was outside myself, watching while someone named Bryon Douglas hurt his girl friend. I couldn't stop him, and I wasn't much interested in the first place.
"How's your brother?" I said. Suddenly it was just some brother of hers in the hospital, not M&M, not my friend, not somebody I too cared about.
"He seems better--but I don't know, he's still mixed up."
That makes two of us, I thought sarcastically.
"I thought"--she swallowed, she was a proud person and it was hard for her to be humble--"I thought maybe you'd come up to the hospital today or call me or something. Then your mother told me what happened."
"Aren't you glad?" I said. "You never liked Mark--you thought he was beautiful, but you didn't like him. Aren't you glad he's out of the way?"
"Bryon, why are you doing this to me?" she said, and suddenly I could hear Mark, as plain as day, saying, "Why are you doing this to me, buddy?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "I can't talk today, Cathy. I'll call you tomorrow."
"O.K.," she said, still puzzled and hurt but no longer humble. "Call me tomorrow."
I wasn't going to call her tomorrow and she knew it.
I wondered impersonally why I didn't love her any more. But it didn't seem to matter.
*
Mark had a hearing, or a trial, or whatever--I never paid any attention to the formalities. I had to testify. I did. I hadn't seen Mark since they had come to get him. He looked relaxed and amused, tipping back in his chair, glancing over everyone in the courtroom with an easy, almost friendly expression. When I was questioned about my relationship with Mark and answered, "We were like brothers," Mark laughed out loud. When he was questioned, he admitted selling drugs and shrugged. I think it was his attitude that made the judge go hard on him, even though by then judges were beginning to crack down on pushers. Mark was only sixteen; he had always been able to talk his way out of anything. But this time he didn't try. When the judge sentenced him to five years in the state reformatory, he didn't even change expression. I felt like someone had knocked the breath out of me, and I heard Mom's little cry of protest, but Mark got to his feet and casually strolled out with the officers. He hadn't looked at me once.
*
The next months
were a blur--I went to school and went to work and went home and studied. I ended up with straight A's that semester, something that surprised me more than anyone, because I couldn't remember a thing I had studied. I didn't date. Once, at the drugstore, I ran into M&M.
His hair was much shorter than it had been in years, and he was still thin.
"I haven't seen you around in a while," he said.
"Yeah, I been busy. How ya been?"
"O.K.," he said, but he looked half-scared, and his old expression of complete trust and intent interest was gone entirely. He looked like a little kid--I had forgotten he was just a little kid. "But, I don't know--It can come back, they told me. I could have a flashback, it could come back. And if I ever have any kids--something about chromosomes--they could be messed up. I don't think I'll ever have any." He was quiet for a minute. "I don't remember things too good any more; all my grades are shot."
I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He had been such a bright, sweet kid. I remembered the time--it seemed years ago--when Mark and I had teased him about wanting a large family. Well, that was taken care of.
"You used to go with Cathy, didn't you?" he said. The poor kid, he was really confused. He was reading a monster comic.
"Yeah, for a while."
"She liked you better than anybody," he said. "I know it. She's dating some guy named Ponyboy Curtis now. She likes him O.K. too."
I couldn't feel any anger, any jealousy, any anything except a halfhearted hope that they would hit it off together. Any grudge I had ever held against Curtis was gone, so was any feeling I had ever had for Cathy. It seemed impossible that I could once feel so emotional about someone, and then suddenly feel nothing.
"I'll see you around," I said. But I hoped I wouldn't. M&M made me sad, and I hadn't felt anything for so long--it was slightly scary.
I spent that summer working full time and trying to get to see Mark at the reformatory. But every time I went they told me that Mark was causing trouble at the reformatory so he couldn't have visitors. I got promoted from sack boy to clerk. I didn't come to work hung over and I didn't give the manager any lip. I seemed to have become a mixture of things I had picked up from Charlie, Mark, Cathy, M&M, Mom, and even obscure people like Mike and the blond hippie-chick and the Shepards. I had learned something from everyone, and I didn't seem to be the same person I had been last year. But like a mixture, I was mixed up.