Lawn Boy(38)

“Ong oof!” I hollered through the blood-drenched towel. “Ong ucking oof!”

“Come again, boy?”

I pulled the towel away, and the blood began gushing anew. “You pulled the wrong fucking tooth! It’s the incisor!”

And I bawled unabashedly, chest heaving, blood running down my bare stomach to the waistband of my underwear.

“Goddammit, Freddy!” I shouted, my mouth pooling with blood.

Mom immediately stuffed the dish towel back in my mouth to slow the bleeding. Freddy calmly dropped the tooth in an empty coffee cup and began rinsing the pliers.

“Relax yourself now,” said Freddy. “This here’s gonna make it easier to access the other one.”

“Uck ou!” I yelled, seizing the pliers.

Bloodied and faint, every solitary cell of my body screaming in agony, I harnessed all the strength I had and began groping for the right tooth, fending off Mom.

“Michael, don’t do this! We’ll go to the dentist. We’ll get on a payment plan. I’ll pick up some doubles. We’ll sell the Tercel. Please don’t do this.”

But I had no choice.

“Okay, dog,” encouraged Freddy. “You got this. Keep a good grip now.”

With a firm, steady grip, I pulled with everything I had, then promptly blacked out.

After that, I dimly remember Freddy and Mom putting me in the bathtub and sponging me off.





Burying the Lede I stayed in bed for two days after that, with a mouthful of gauze and a bottle of peroxide, taking my meals through a straw. Miraculously, I avoided infection. And though I was quite certain that all my bottom teeth were already beginning to shift, I was grateful as hell to be rid of the agony and ready to face the future.


With Chaz’s car repoed, and not a word from the man himself, I had no choice but to admit that I was no longer in a holding pattern. So Tuesday morning, having spent the entirety of both Sunday and Monday in bed convalescing, I ironed my button-down shirt and my baggy slacks and resumed my job search with a still-swollen jaw and a new, considerably more spacious smile.

But first I had to drop by the Verizon store and prepay for minutes in case I got any callbacks or in the increasingly unlikely event that Chaz tried to contact me. My data was dangerously low, which was why I didn’t always answer Remy’s texts.

At the Verizon store, there was a guy with Sheetrock dust in his hair and another guy with paint on his jeans, both in line in front of me. And of course, there was also the obligatory old lady who needed instructions for unlocking her screen. I waited forty-five minutes. When I finally got to the counter, they tried to give me a new phone at “no charge.” But I’m not as stupid as I look. I knew there’d be all kinds of strings and data packages attached, so I told the guy no thanks, I just want minutes. But I was eligible for an upgrade, he said. I don’t want an upgrade, I told him.

“But you’re entitled to one.”

“I don’t want one.”

“But you earned it.”

“I don’t want it.”

“It’s free.”

We volleyed back and forth like that until I finally wore him down, and he reluctantly submitted to selling me thirty minutes, which I paid for entirely in singles and loose change.

My first exercise in pavement pounding was a return to the Subway up on Finn Hill, the one that was formerly filling night shifts. When I asked for the manager, I was expecting the big guy, Jay with the shallow breathing, but it turned out they had a new manager, whom I recognized immediately. He was maybe fifty years old, paunchy, and extremely tired looking. I knew this guy from somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t place him. Was it my woodshop teacher from high school? Somebody from the bus? A regular at Tequila’s?

“Sorry, kid,” he said. “We filled evenings last week.”

“What about days?”

“No dice. You try the store on 305?”

“Are they hiring?”

“No.”

“What do you think? Should I go down there, anyway?”

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

“So why’d you ask?”

“Just curious, I guess. I’ll tell you what, try back next week.”

“You think you might have an opening then?”

“No.”

He shook my hand, then promptly circled back around the counter, slipped on a pair of plastic gloves, and started dressing some lady’s sandwich. On my way out, he called out, and it wasn’t until then that I finally placed him.

“Oh, and kid. About your writing sample.”

“Did you read it?” I asked.

“I read it,” he said.

“And?”

“Full of split infinitives. Dangling participles, not to mention vague pronoun references, passive forms, fragments, comma splices, you name it. Didn’t you take freshman comp? Kid, you keep dangling participles like that, and somebody’s going to hit their head.”

“Very funny,” I said.

“Worst of all,” he said, “you buried the lede.”

“Bury this,” I said, giving him the finger.





Try Not to Be Black Nate’s been short of breath the past couple days, and a little lethargic. So Wednesday, I made a three o’clock doctor’s appointment for him. Did I mention Nate doesn’t like doctor appointments? He was like a goddamn silver-backed gorilla in the back of the Tercel, pounding the seatbacks, stomping his feet, pawing at the side window. Thank God, Freddy was along for the ride.