Bronson

"Are you going to do it?" I asked Tommy.

We were standing on the landing of a metal staircase outside the second floor doorway of a cement block building. It was an old rec room at Tommy's trailer park that hadn't been used for anything but storage as long as anyone could remember. Donny had shimmied up the other side of the building to get in an open window, then came through and unlocked the door. It was dark inside lit only by the streetlight nearby.

"No way," he said lighting up a Marlboro. Before he could get a second drag, Donny was finished. Tommy and I laughed as we heard his final death groan. He was on top of a naked woman he and some other hooligans had brought up that night, a mental case who lay comatose on an old mattress on the floor. The others were waiting to take their turn. I didn't know how they could stand it, and I was glad Tommy was as resistant as I. Nervous, we glanced around at the eerie landscape of old cars parked beside older trailers in dirt and weed yards. The light of a phone booth radiated in a small puddle near the park entrance next to a soda machine. Suddenly, a figure was silhouetted against the light striding our way with purpose. You could see that the head was bald. It was the park owner.

Quickly, Tommy and I scurried down the stairway and ran for the woods. We had done this without warning the others. I don't know if it was simply cowardice or some meaner instinct, but we had gotten away a good distance so that we could stand in the shadows and watch what happened without being seen. Suddenly a light came on inside the building. The other fellows had poured out through the open window, but Donny and the woman were still inside. In horror, Tommy and I began to laugh and regale one another with imagined images of what the owner must have encountered, Donny jumping up with his pants around his knees, the demented woman lying on the ground with her clothes off, Donny's half-fogged brain racing for excuses as he tried to pull his zipper up.

It wasn't long before Donny and the half-wit walked outside onto the landing and down the stairs. I had no desire to talk to him, to find out what happened, and neither had Tommy. We waited a while for things to settle down before we headed to the car and nosed it silently onto the highway heading toward the distant nourishment of a fast food restaurant where we could relish our escape.

I had already seen too much of this sort of thing. There was Diana who lived in a town twenty miles away, the daughter of a high school coach. Some of the boys would drive out and pick her up on a desperate weekend and bring her back to one of the trailers and get her drunk. Everything was done as if on a dare, in the loud, sarcastic tones of a criminal bragging about his crime.

The only safety, I thought, was in movement. I was an angel, pure, without guilt or sin. I would just drive away. The only time I was truly happy was when I was driving alone. The highway offered me another place, a way out.

That year, I was enamored with television show called "Then Came Bronson" about a fellow who rode his motorcycle all around the country. I would do that, I thought. I would just go.

A few days later, I was standing with Donny and Tommy by the laundry room smoking cigarettes and telling tales. There had been consequences. The owner had put up No Loitering and No Trespassing signs around the park. It was said that he had talked to the half-wit's parents who took care of her and told them they would have to move. And then, just as we spoke, a big car drove by with an older couple in front, the man wearing horn rim glasses, both hands locked onto the wheel as the car bobbed over the narrow, rutted road. In the back seat was the woman herself, her expressionless face turned toward Donny, one hand raised in a passive wave.

Somehow, I thought, just to get away.