The Highway Kind(37)

Ted glanced over at me and wiggled his eyebrows, as if to assure me it was all a game, and then he dropped to the mat and took the dominant position over Walter. Both of them looked up at Jason, who had raised his hand.

“What about a clock?” I said.

“No clock,” said Jason, his eyes pink and his pupils dilated, chocolate ice cream staining his beard. “A pin ends it. Go!”

Jason dropped his hand in a slashing movement and Walter immediately scooted onto his ass. Ted tried to hold him but Walter broke free and got up on his feet.

“Escape,” said Jason, and he held up one finger.

Ted had gotten to a standing position and he and Walter faced off. Walter’s legs were bent and he was moving his hands in a circular motion. Ted was standing straight. I knew little about wrestling, but I sensed that Ted’s stance made him vulnerable. He’d made a mistake.

“Shoot him, Walter,” said Jason, and Walter went in low on my brother, wrapped his arms around his thighs, and lifted him up off his feet. Walter then drove Ted hard down into the mat. Ted turned onto his stomach to avoid the near fall and pin. Walter straddled him and remained in control.

“Takedown,” said Jason. “Two points.”

Walter clamped his thighs around Ted’s legs and put one hand on his upper back; with his other hand he grabbed the biceps of Ted’s right arm and pushed up on it like he was raising a pump arm on a well. Ted’s face was crushed into the mat and I heard him grunt.

“Stop,” I said.

Walter pushed harder. I saw Ted’s face contort in pain.

I shouted at Ted and told him to tap out.

Ted didn’t do it. Walter, his face a distorted mask of concentration, pushed the arm to its limit and then wrenched it violently to the left. We all heard something tear free.

Walter stood up, sweaty, his eyes wide with excitement. Jason slapped him five. Mike, sickened, looked away.

I went to Ted, whose arm had dropped but was hanging at an impossible angle to his shoulder. I helped him to his knees and then got him up on his feet. He was in great pain. “You broke his fucking arm,” I said. “You happy now, Walter?”

“He’s all right,” said Walter. “It just needs to be reset or somethin’. Right, Ted?”

Ted didn’t answer. Walter and Jason went back to the couch without another word. When we left the house through the basement door, we could hear their brain-damaged dog barking maniacally from up on the second floor.

I drove Ted’s ’Cuda to the hospital, Ted in the bucket beside me. Walter was right. Ted’s arm wasn’t broken. It had been dislocated. It just needed to be reset.


Things happened very quickly after that.

In the ER, Ted mentioned that he had been feeling dizzy lately and that he had been running a low-grade fever off and on for the past few weeks. The doctor on duty did a blood test and saw something he didn’t like. Our family physician referred Ted to an oncologist, who, after further lab work, determined that my brother was in the advanced stages of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He had cancer.

Ted died three months later in the bedroom we’d shared since childhood. The details of his illness and rapid decline are too painful for me to recall on these pages. We buried him next to our mother in the Catholic cemetery on the grounds of our church.

I don’t remember how it got into the head of my father that it was Walter Mahoney who had triggered the cancer in my brother. The doctors never implied that a dislocated shoulder could cause cancer, and there is no medical evidence that I know of to suggest that this could be the case. But my father believed it, and, because I loved and respected him, I began to believe it too.

The allegation got around the community and for many it became fact. Maybe I fueled the rumor, I don’t know. Walter Mahoney, the lowlife, had killed Ted Donnelly, a clean-cut, standup guy who had done the right thing and served his country during an unpopular war. It quickly got pretty bad for Walter, a guy few people had liked to begin with. He was even shunned by the car crowd who were his peers. Eventually, he moved out of his parents’ house and left the neighborhood. But his absence didn’t do a thing to take my father’s mind off Ted.

Pop began to put a shot of whiskey next to his beer in the evenings. It took hold of him and he leaned on it. He turned into someone else virtually overnight. He knew what was happening to him, but he wouldn’t or couldn’t stop.

The house became a place I dreaded to enter. I moved out of my old bedroom to a smaller room in the basement. Pop had parked and tarped the ’Cuda in our driveway, so even the exterior of our home was a cold reminder of Ted’s demise.

In the year that followed my brother’s death, my father quit his job at the Esso station, and I took his place as a certified mechanic in the garage. There were other changes. I unloaded my Dart and bought a clean-line ’71 Fury GT with a 440 under the hood. I filled out, and between that and the pressure and responsibility of living with my father, my face aged and grew hard.

I’d talked to one of Walter’s ex–running buddies and learned that Walter had moved to an apartment building over in the neighboring county. He worked in a body shop and was still driving the AMX. Once again, my fantasies turned to violence.

One night I came home to find my father passed out on the floor. His head was cut from where he’d hit it on the edge of the coffee table. He was snoring. I shook him and helped him up. He glanced around the living room as if he’d woken up in a strange place. His eyes were jittery when he finally looked my way.