That Was Then, This Is Now Read online

  "There was this other color," M&M said to me seriously but half-afraid, as if he thought I'd turn into a spider any minute. "I don't know its name; it told me but I forgot. It said I was being paid back for all the carrots I ate. I didn't know--I thought--I didn't know about the carrots before. I don't think it was my fault." He was crying, tears were pouring down his face, but he hadn't changed his expression. He looked so thin and scared, not a bit like the M&M I knew. "Do you think I should be paid back for something I didn't know about?"

  "No," I said, clearing my throat. "I don't think it was your fault." I put my arm around him and held him. He was shaking real bad.

  Cathy came back. "Daddy's going to meet us at the hospital. Can you carry him?"

  "Yeah," I said. I picked him up easily; he couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds.

  "I'm so tired," M&M said. "I was gone so long, and I didn't have any sleep." I carried him down the stairs and out of that house. Nobody made any move to stop me. Nobody seemed to care.

  Cathy drove us to the hospital. Halfway there M&M started suddenly and screamed, "Where am I?"

  "It's O.K., kid, you're going to be O.K."

  "Where am I?" he was screaming in terror. "Why don't I know where I am?"

  I was just sick. I didn't know how Cathy was managing to drive the car. I never felt so bad before. I just held onto M&M. There wasn't any sense in trying to talk to him. I felt then that he was as much my little brother as Cathy's. That's how bad I felt.

  Mr. Carlson was waiting for us at the hospital. We drove right up to the emergency entrance, and there he was. I got out and picked M&M up again, but I didn't have him for long. Mr. Carlson took him and carried him into the hospital, holding him very close, very tight.

  M&M was telling him about the spiders.

  10

  We stayed there at the hospital until the doctor could talk to us. He couldn't tell us much--physically M&M would recover, but mentally . . .

  "Will he always be like he is now?" Cathy said. She had really been brave--no crying, no hysterics. Only by the tense, tight way she was ripping the hem out of her shirt was she showing how bad she was shook.

  The doctor replied, "I have no way of knowing. He might get better, or he may have lost his mind forever. Either way, I don't believe he'll ever be completely the same. LSD is a powerful drug, people react to it differently. If these kids would only . . ."

  I tuned him out. I won't listen to sermons. Besides, I was hacked off at that doctor. He shouldn't be saying things like that. He should be saying that M&M would be fine, that tomorrow morning he would be the same again. Couldn't he see how what he was saying was tearing Mr. Carlson to pieces? Couldn't he see what it was doing to Cathy? What kind of a doctor was he, anyway?

  "I want to drive you home," I said to Cathy.

  She shook her head. "I don't want to go home. I want to stay here."

  "Cathy, I want you to go home," Mr. Carlson said. "You can't do anything here and I want you to be with your mother when she hears about this. M&M will be asleep for a few hours. I'm going home in an hour or so. Wait until I get there before you tell your mother." His voice broke. "What are we going to tell her?"

  "Come on," I said, putting my arm around Cathy, guiding her to the car.

  "Wait a minute," Mr. Carlson said. "Bryon, I want to tell you how much I appreciate all you've done. I'm really proud of you, son."

  That was the first time any man had ever called me "son" without making me mad. I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded to him and gave Cathy a squeeze.

  In the car Cathy broke down and cried. I drove to the park and stopped. I held her while she cried. She was almost hysterical. I was crying too. I couldn't stand seeing her hurt like that. I just couldn't stand it. "Don't cry like this, baby," I said. My voice was shaking. "Cathy, don't. It won't do any good."

  "Oh, my God," she sobbed. "What if he's lost his mind forever? He was such a sweet kid, the sweetest damn kid in the whole world."

  This was the first time I had ever heard her swear. I tried to think about this fact, to focus on something like that before I lost control and became hysterical too. "He's going to be all right," I said. "He'll be just like before."

  "No he won't." Cathy was trying to stop crying now. "He won't ever be the same." This set her off crying again. My shirt front was soaked clear through. She just hung onto me and cried while I patted her head. Finally she sat up. "I love you so much, Bryon," she said. "I don't know what I'd have done without you."

  "I love you, too, baby," I said. This was getting easier to say. "And don't worry about what the doctor said. He's one of those hippie-haters. M&M will be O.K., I know it."

  "I'd better go home now," Cathy said. "I have to be there when Mamma hears. Oh, this is just going to kill her."

  I let her out at her house, but I didn't go in. I figured this was a family matter, and I wasn't a member of the family yet.

  *

  I was surprised to see how late it was when I got home. Mom was asleep. I went into my room and lay down without bothering to turn off the light. Mark wasn't home yet. I was tired. I felt empty and drained. Nothing can wear you out like caring about people. I was tired, yet I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. I closed my eyes, but I kept seeing pictures: all these people were spinning around in my head--Mark and Charlie and Mike and Angela, Cathy and M&M and Mr. Carlson, and Tim and Curly Shepard. Life had seemed so simple once, now it suddenly seemed so complicated. I could remember a time when my only worry had been paying Charlie the three bucks I owed him. Things used to be simple and now they weren't. I wanted a cigarette bad. I halfheartedly searched my pockets, but I knew I didn't have any. Then I remembered Mark's spare carton and rolled off the bed and reached under his mattress. I felt something strange and pulled it out. It was a long cylinder-like thing. I unscrewed one end and all these pills came rolling out.

  I am not dumb by any means. I have never used drugs except for a couple of tries with grass, but I knew what they looked like. I looked at this bunch of pills--there were hundreds of them, and it was like a machine in my head went click, click, click. And it came up with an answer I didn't want.

  Mark was selling this stuff. This was way too many pills for anybody to have if he was just taking them himself, and besides, I would have noticed something different about Mark if he had been taking them. You can't use drugs and not show it--I knew too many kids who were users not to know that. Mark was selling. Mark was a pusher. That was where he was getting his money. That was why he had known about the hippie house; that was why they had known him; that was why he had known where to look for M&M.

  M&M. Cathy.

  M&M was in the hospital, and maybe he was messed up for life--and Mark was selling the stuff that made him that way. Maybe this wasn't LSD, but it was a step in that direction, and God only knows what all Mark had been selling. I thought about that blond, dead-looking chick and about M&M screaming about spiders and about Cathy half-hysterical with grief. I thought about Mr. Carlson and the bitter doctor, and the whole mess was swirling around in my head, and it felt like it would burst wide open.

  When I thought about the cause of all this misery, I became very cool. I very calmly called the cops. M&M had lost his mind and Cathy was hurting, and I did something about it. Then I sat down on a chair in the front room and waited. It seemed only a minute later when Mark came in.

  "Hey, still up?" he said. Then he stopped. "What's the matter--Bryon, you look awful! What is it?"

  I held out the cylinder.

  "Oh," Mark said, after a pause. "You found them, huh? Well, don't worry, buddy, I don't take them. I have a good enough time like I am."

  "Just how are you, anyway?" I said.

  "What?" Mark said, confused.

  "M&M is in the hospital--acid trip. They think he may have lost his mind."

  "Man, that is awful. That poor kid." Then he looked at me. "Bryon, don't look like that. I said I don't take them. Don't you believe me?"

/>   "I believe you," I said dully.

  "We needed the money, you know. I tried getting a job, but with my police record nobody'd hire me. Then I met this guy on the Ribbon--he set me up. I figure I don't have to take it to sell it, so what's the worry?"

  "M&M--" I began, but I was too tired, too numb to talk.

  "Is that what's buggin' you? Listen, I didn't sell M&M anything. He got it from somebody else. Lookit, Bryon, they're going to get it from somebody if they want it, so why can't I make some money? I never forced it on anybody. I never tried to talk somebody into using drugs so I could make a buck."

  He could have talked all night and I wouldn't have changed my mind. This was wrong. For the first time in years I thought about the golden-eyed cowboy who had been Mark's father. Was Mark a throwback? To what? I wondered tiredly why I had never seen it before: Mark had absolutely no concept of what was right and what was wrong; he didn't obey any laws, because he couldn't see that there were any. Laws, right and wrong, they didn't matter to Mark, because they were just words.

  "Bryon, what is it?" Mark cried suddenly. "Listen, if it bugs you that much I'll quit. I'll stop selling if you don't like it. Shoot, I never thought it would bother you. I sort of thought you knew about it."

  Don't drag me into this, I thought. Don't try to make me out to be blind, just because you are. Aloud I said, "I called the cops," and I felt as if I was talking in my sleep. Mark went white.

  "What?" he said softly, disbelievingly. "What did you say?" We could already hear the siren. "Bryon, you know what something like this would do to me with my record. Bryon, tell me you're lyin'." Mark was pleading desperately.

  I thought maybe he would run for it, but he didn't. He just sat down in a chair opposite me. He was white and his eyes were black with a rim of gold around them. He looked the way he had when he had been clobbered with that bottle. "Bryon," he said quietly, like he was trying hard to understand, like he was totally confused, like he thought maybe I would answer in a foreign language, "why are you doing this to me, buddy? Bryon, just tell me."

  I couldn't tell him. I didn't know.

  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.